


Holy Sick/Divine Nights

by Crossley



Series: We Could Be Utopia [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Claiming Bites, Consent Issues, Cunnilingus, Divinity issues, Dom/sub, F/M, Female My Unit | Byleth, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Knotting, Marking, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mental Health Issues, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Not Not an Alpha Byleth, Omega Dimitri, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pack Dynamics, Past Rape/Non-con, Pegging, Poor Life Choices, Possessive Behavior, Self-Harm, Sex Magic, Sex Magic Pegging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:20:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 110,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22825498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crossley/pseuds/Crossley
Summary: Even now, blood-drenched and vicious, broken and wild and smelling of smoke and death, Dimitri is to Byleth as he has always been: prey, playing at predation.In the early months of the war, Byleth must navigate her new normal and the choices she did (and didn't) make as Dimitri goes through his heat.
Relationships: Blue Lions Students & My Unit | Byleth, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth, Dorothea Arnault & My Unit | Byleth
Series: We Could Be Utopia [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688812
Comments: 515
Kudos: 702





	1. one (-25 days)

**Author's Note:**

> **Trigger warnings.** This story contains scenes describing past sexual assault, self-harm, sexual trafficking, and brief physical child abuse. All chapters with significant traumatic discussions and/or events will be tagged individually. There will be one serious self-harm scene that will be labeled and summarized for readers’ sake. The story depicts canon violence and canon untreated mental illness. Classist, ableist, and gendered slurs are used at various points. Warnings will apply on an ongoing basis. Furthermore, as this is an A/B/O story where one of the parties is experiencing a serious mental illness episode, consent cannot be fully given. Therefore, all sexual encounters in this story have warnings for dubious consent. 
> 
> Please take note of my warnings and take care of yourselves. 
> 
> **Title** from Lorde’s [Sober II (Melodrama)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8j-PqSFHcc). 
> 
> **Credits** go to IronPen, Barbaradentro, Bu, and the Dimileth AU Discord server for their support, soundboarding, beta/error fixing, and listening to me scream about Fódlandi class politics in a/b/o porn for hours on end. 
> 
> If you're unfamiliar with the omegaverse tropes, I recommend either the very balanced [fanlore.org entry on omegaverse](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Alpha/Beta/Omega) or [this primer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/403644/chapters/665489), which is both informative and irreverent. Assuming you didn't run away screaming, all I can say is: I agree the whole concept is absurd, and I _wrote_ this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Garreg Mach Cathedral smells like pain.

**GREAT TREE MOON 1180**

The lordlings were watching.

Predictable. They wanted the measure of her. Likely only the first of many she’d encounter at Garreg Mach. People were often wary of her, her face, her reputation… her scent.

“So… Byleth, right? What’s your story?”

Byleth glanced at the lordling. Warm smile, cool eyes. Typical. “What story?”

He laughed. Easy, rote. “You know, your story. Origin tale, badass boasts, maybe a sworn enemy or three… a merc like you must have all kinds of good tales.”

Little worth retelling of the observations she made while existing behind wall-thick glass. Days were long and boredom came on quick. Why recall dull things?

“I find myself agreeing with Claude,” the prince said. He pretended not to watch her, but was poor at hiding it, turning his face as shy maidens did. “With your experience as a mercenary, you must have many stories of battle.”

“Sure, or, you know, the good stuff, like jumping off buildings or out lovers’ windows.” Easy, rote. Warm smile, cool eyes. 

Byleth shrugged. “You want a story? Ask a bard.”

The princess also pretended not to watch, but she was studying Byleth closest of all. It was the princess who dared the most, who dipped close to take the measure of Byleth the one true way all nobles did: by scent. She was subtle, and equally subtle masking the confusion upon her face.

But not subtle enough.

“You are… hard to read,” the princess told Byleth. 

Iron will. Brittle. Typical. She meant: _why don’t you have a scent?_

Alpha, Byleth assumed by her presumption, all of them. Nobles didn’t let omegas run things. Only certain types of fucking qualified for leadership roles. Foolish. Pointless.

The lordling’s eyes narrowed, cooler still. He attempted to hang an arm over Byleth’s shoulders to disguise his true intent. Byleth ducked away, but he caught enough to know he caught nothing. He hid his confusion better than the princess at the absence of scent. Better, but not better enough. “Look, maybe all this travel and fighting is the same to you, but to us? Mind-blowing.” He gestured forward with his chin. “Maybe you can get His Princeliness to blush.”

The prince, who had walked ahead of them, turned to confront the lordling. Instead, Byleth nearly walked into the prince, sidestepping almost too late. He earned a noseful of nothing for his near-trouble, and eyes darted over her in clear confusion from the lack of scent. 

Something… off in his eyes’ movement. Too fast. Hypervigilant. Ready to strike.

“Leave her be, Claude,” the prince said, and he became chivalry and command. Predictable. “Not everyone is so easily won by roguish charm.”

Live bait for the lordling. He seized upon it like wild dogs. Slid up, invaded space. “But you’re saying I have roguish charm, Your Princeliness? That’s quite the compliment from you.”

The prince did not flinch. He stared down the lordling with a straight chin and hard mouth. Born to rule. Lords were like that. Typical.

_And yet._

There upon the prince’s cheeks was the barest hint of pink. A drop of blood in an ocean.

_And yet._

Byleth saw the prince limp, his throat caught in the jaws of another.

_Interesting._

Curiosity stirred in Byleth.

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

Garreg Mach Cathedral smells like pain.

Cold winds blow as Byleth enters, carrying the scent of worlds burning and bodies decaying. The engineer’s report buried somewhere on Byleth’s desk credits the cold drafts to the angles of the holes in the ceiling and walls. The pain, however, belongs to the ruin of a man standing before the ruin of an altar. _One-eyed demon_ is the most common name for him among the scattered knights and clerics who braved the snowy passes to return to their duty, but _boar prince_ has caught on, no thanks to Felix. Better those than the ones they whisper outside Byleth’s earshot.

Another draft. _Blood-burning-rot-fester-poison-smoke-honey-death-die-please._

Dimitri’s cloak flutters, but he otherwise remains motionless as the death he stalks. He does not acknowledge her presence, and Byleth has numbed to that hurt. Setting down a bowl of rabbit stew, Byleth sniffs the air. The honey’s more present in Dimitri’s bouquet, but otherwise no change. Byleth is still new to the mapping of scent associations to emotions, but she still knows that bittersweet honey. It haunts her dreams.

Felix leans against a column and does Byleth the courtesy of not sneering at the food bowl that will go untouched. He’s all geometry, flat planes and sharp lines. Rotten scent, molten iron and bitter almond buried in the cathedral ruins. “It’s been quiet today.”

Byleth raises an eyebrow. Scowling at her, Felix corrects himself. “He’s been quiet today.”

Tolerable. Byleth stands beside Felix, waiting to see if he’ll volunteer anything else. Instead, Felix motions for her to follow. They step out of the cathedral and onto the bridge, where Byleth resists the urge to gulp in fresh air. 

“Did you catch it?” Felix asks.

“Catch what?”

Felix’s mouth twists into an angry snarl. He has a nose for lies. “You know what.”

The honey. Felix should know it better than anyone. It shouldn’t annoy Byleth that he does. “What of it?” 

“It’s coming.”

Byleth furrows her brow. “You’re sure?”

Wrong thing to say. Felix’s mouth twists into an ugly knot. “Yeah, I’m sure. I was born to be sure.”

Ingrid once told Byleth that the Shields always present as the Kings and Queens of Faerghus do. Much has been made in bards’ tales and storybooks of the correlation, but the full relationship between the Blaiddyd and Fraldarius crests is not public knowledge, and remains somewhat of a mystery even to its bearers. What Byleth knows is that Felix complained loudly and often about the rot in Dimitri’s scent long before Byleth’s nose could find it, so the reverse likely holds as well.

Byleth’s gaze returns to the cathedral, and Felix stands beside her. “When?”

“I don’t know.” The words catch in his throat. It bothers him, not knowing; the rancid notes of his own scent intensify. “I couldn’t track him at the academy because he was suppressed to the gills.” _And I can’t track him based off my cycles because I’m_ still _suppressed to the gills_ goes unspoken. “Best guess is early Great Tree Moon.”

Byleth does not do the math. She focuses on logistics.

Wintering in the ruins of Garreg Mach has been a double-edged sword. A flurry of blizzards blocked the lowest mountain pass and left her and the newly reunited Blue Lions scrounging for resources. The snow delayed Edelgard’s inevitable attack long enough for the Lions to get their bearings, and Byleth supplements Ashe’s game hunting with “miraculous” crop yields from the greenhouse. (Strictly speaking, using the power of a progenitor god to speed crop growth is a miracle, but Byleth doesn’t have time to examine the divinity of her works in a post-Sothis reality.) Now, however, the snows are melting, and Shamir’s latest report indicates that the waning year and rebirth of the land mark the revival of the Imperial war engines.

Their goal has been to reconnect with Rodrigue Fraldarius, who Felix estimates has amassed 10,000 soldiers under loyalist banners. With the Knights of Seiros returning to the fold and the Blue Lions’ personal battalions, they might field a true resistance against the Empire. Against _Edelgard._

Progress with Rodrigue slowed in the legendary Faerghus winters, however, pushing their plans back to the beginning of spring. Any rendezvous will require Dimitri present, as he’s only rallying point that would compel the loyalist vassals to leave the resistance fight and join the Knights of Seiros on the offensive. This will require another delay. Then again, each of the Blue Lions have voiced their concerns about how the vassals will react to Dimitri’s current state. Perhaps more time to strategize with Rodrigue will work in their favor.

A complication, then, but manageable. “Thank you, Felix,” Byleth says. “Ashe caught some rabbits and made a stew. Get some while it’s still warm.”

Felix’s mouth drops open with a huff. ”Wait, that’s it?” he asks, shaking his head in disbelief. “Seriously? That animal smells like a building full of death, Sylvain’s arm is broken in three places, and you want to talk about _dinner?_ ”

“Yes.” Felix’s nose can only tell him that a lie is being told; it cannot tell him why. Sylvain’s broken arm is a problem, but not for the reasons Felix thinks.

Felix scowls. “This conversation isn’t over.”

Yes it is. “Enjoy the stew.”

Byleth heads back to the cathedral while Felix mutters, “Fucking alphas,” behind her.

“Not an alpha,” Byleth calls back as she walks away. His ozone is heavy in the air, heavier still when Felix shoots a lightning bolt of frustration off the bridge.

Back in the cathedral, the plate’s untouched. Predictable. She sits in a pew and waits.

Nothing. Nothing but blood and death and smoke and rot. 

(A defense mechanism, Mercedes explained, repellent to the unknown but distress call to the familiar. The smell of Duscur, of Garreg Mach, of five years gone. When Byleth first found him, huddled in the shadows atop the Goddess Tower, her body warred between wrapping him in her arms and rushing outside to empty her stomach. She settled on offering him her hand. He did not accept.)

He will not eat the food they offer. No one can figure out where he sleeps or bathes, though evidence suggests both happen. When he disappears into the wilds to “hunt,” not even Felix or Shamir can follow his tracks. Sometimes he returns with game, more often with coin or valuables. All he tosses at her feet without a word before returning to his vigil.

Byleth and the Blue Lions have been patient, for the most part. She has made herself a steady, consistent presence as per Mercedes and later Manuela’s recommendations, no less determined than his ghosts to haunt him. (Byleth likes to think she has the advantage. After all, she’s the only ghost of his to climb out of her grave.)

Still, while no one expected Dimitri to shed five years of living in survival mode overnight, no progress has been made in nearly three months. He still holds himself apart from them, ignores living companions in favor of dead ones, loses himself in bloodlust when they venture out to earn coin or secure resources. This is a miracle Byleth cannot perform, and time is running short.

Time to poke the boar.

Byleth takes a deep breath. “The pass is clearing.”

Nothing.

Again. “The road to Garreg Mach will reopen soon.”

Nothing.

Another. “We anticipate the Imperial army will retaliate by month’s end.”

 _There._ He moves, and is both smaller and larger, stalking predator and charging beast. _One-eyed demon. Boar prince._ “ _Good_.”

It doesn’t feel like progress, but it’s novel, and novelty has always been Byleth’s weakness. So she dares more. Stands up. Walks in front of him. He squints away from her face as if she were a candle in the dark. She escalates. “Marianne’s father secured a steady silphium supply.”

 _Blood-slick-ROT-FILTH-STOP._

Byleth resists the urge to hold her nose. He growls at her, teeth bared. _“Keep that poison away from me.”_

Predictable. He takes nothing else from them, so why would he accept something as loaded and precious as silphium? 

_And yet._

The rage. The _scent._

Byleth hears cracking bone and her stomach churns. 

“Okay,” she says, clearing her thoughts to respond with a neutral scent and expression. “The offer is open. If you need anything else—”

“I do not,” Dimitri cuts her off.

“But if you did,” Byleth repeats, more forceful now, “ask. We would help you.”

Dimitri snorts, derisive, his once-warm face cold and cruel. He steps closer, looming over Byleth. The air becomes easier to breathe, almost pleasant. The honey returns, and with it a note of something Byleth can’t place. Not quite a lily, too spicy. Rhododendron, maybe, probably one of the Faerghan varieties. 

“Would you, Professor? Help me?” Dimitri asks, mocking. “Would you _protect_ me if I needed you?”

Byleth cocks her head. What does that mean? Of course she’d protect him on the battlefield.

“Predictable,” Dimitri murmurs, turning away with a swing of his cape. “Fortunately for you, Professor, monsters do not require protecting.”

As he storms out of the cathedral, Byleth breathes in the fresh waft of pain, chasing away his honeyed poison. His shoulders are lower than before. Byleth bites her lip. Even now, blood-drenched and vicious, broken and wild and smelling of smoke and death, Dimitri is to Byleth as he has always been: prey, playing at predation.

_One-eyed demon._

_Boar prince._

_Feral omega._

* * *

Ask six of Byleth’s students to describe her scent on the first day of class, and they would answer, to a person: _scentless_. Ask six of Byleth’s former students to describe her scent today, and you would receive thirteen answers.

By the time someone at Garreg Mach thought to ask Byleth what her presentation was, Byleth had already learned that nothing of what she knew about alphas and omegas applied in this gleaming jewel of a place, worlds away from the edges of Fódlan where mercenaries floated. So Byleth told them she did not know her presentation (inaccurate, but not a lie), and that she knew nothing of alphas and omegas (a lie, yet accurate). Playing the fool comes easily enough with her empty face. They tell her the basics, what the commoners know. 

This is what every Fódlandi commoner knows of alphas and omegas: that every crest bearer is one or the other. That commanding alphas protect and dominate; alluring omegas yield and submit. Alphas have ruts, omegas have heats, and they may forge unbreakable bonds with one another. Beyond that is rumor and wild conjecture, entertainment for page and stage.

Her new students became teachers and peers in learning the bizarre, convoluted sexual politics of Fódlan’s nobility. Over time, Byleth’s surface stillness and hollow, china-doll face invited them to pour secrets into her as water pours into an empty vessel. She watched their faces crack and warp as they repeated the contradictions and hypocrisies their world took as truth. 

This is what every Fódlandi noble knows of alphas and omegas: that every crest bearer is one or the other, and that their presentation at sixteen years old must be a blessing from the goddess. That alphas were natural leaders due to their natural drive to protect, while omegas were suited to serve as helpmeets. That heats and ruts took place alone, in special scent-dampening rooms, until a suitable bondmate was selected. That alpha/omega relationships had the highest rate of producing crest-bearing children. That alphas must not let their fierce natures drive them berserk. That omegas need the strong hands of alphas to soothe their fragile nerves. 

That they are not animals. (Not like the _ferals._ )

The mistake made was that everyone at Garreg Mach took for granted that they were the first to entrust Byleth with their secrets, hardly able to imagine a world outside their gilded cages.

They were not the first.

People who washed up beside mercenary companies were often flushed from its core. Though most peasants went their entire lives without meeting an alpha or an omega, in Byleth’s line of work? Flotsam and jetsam. For Byleth, who watched her life behind wall-thick glass, who dreamed verdant crimson azure and woke to gray gray gray, who swung her sword and reaped death with the bored indifference of a farmer swinging a sickle and reaping wheat, the too-feeling cast-off alphas and omegas of Fódlan were… novel. Fertile hunting for a girl who stalked anything that might disrupt the soul-crushing monotony of a life observed. They, in turn, flocked to her as bees flocked to the first flowers of spring.

This is what _Byleth_ knew of alphas and omegas, learned from their words and their bodies: that not all possessed a crest. That wild magics fill the gaps of biology, forming alpha knots and phalluses, sheltering omega wombs, before dissipating like smoke on the wind. That _sex_ is not _gender_ is not _presentation_ is not _expression_. That the alphas struggle to find work outside sporting and killing. That the omegas struggle to find work outside performing and whoring. That they never feel safe. That they only survive by banding together to care for one another, because no one else would.

That the alphas, in rare unguarded moments, would confess they were ever being held underwater, drowning in their own minds. That the omegas, in rarer unguarded moments, would confess they were ever longing to slip beneath the waves and never return to the surface.

That they experience, to a last, the feeling of having been betrayed by their bodies.

This is what Byleth did not know: what _she_ was. At sixteen, something stirred, awakened deep within her, but no presentation followed: no alpha rut, no commoner woman’s menses, no omega heat. Not even a scent. Just the hunger, the desire to feel _something_ other than gray gray gray.

It was the intersection between what Byleth knew, and did not know, that laid the foundation for the last entering class of Garreg Mach Officer’s Academy _losing their damn minds._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Game Lore Adjustments:
> 
>   * The war’s timeline is longer because it now has weather and no fast travel. No more running to Fódlan’s Throat and back in a day.
>   * No class transfers. All students stayed with their original classes, with a partial exception for Marianne, hence her presence at Garreg Mach. Reasons will be mentioned in future chapters. 
>   * Byleth still had maximum obtainable support levels with _all_ recruitable characters, plus a B support with Claude, C+ support with Edelgard, and B support with Rhea.
>   * Manuela returned to Garreg Mach sometime after the reunion at Byleth’s request to provide a medical consultation for Dimitri. Hanneman joined her for reasons outside the scope of this story. They’re both contractors being paid by Margrave Edmund.
>   * This story was fully drafted and rewrites were 80% complete when Cindered Shadows dropped, so the Ashen Wolves and Abyss were not factored into the main storyline. They will be integrated into future stories, but sharp-eyed readers may spot brief sewer child cameos.
> 

> 
> Worldbuilding Notes:
> 
>   * Alphas and omegas only exist in Fódlan and are less than 2% of the Fódlandi population. Most of these are nobility.
>   * All humans in the 3H universe have enhanced lymphatic systems that generate, store, and release energy, either through physical or magical means. Crest stones grow inside the associated lymph nodes. 
>   * Presentation is a magical phenomenon, utilizing the altered lymphatic system to generate/interpret pheromones, the presentation cycle, bonding/claiming, etc.
>   * [Silphium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium) was the now-extinct herb prized in antiquity as an abortifacient. It finds new life here as the only safe suppressant for standard heat/rut cycles. It grows in the lowlands of the Kupala Coast. Like its namesake, it cannot be cultivated and is in high demand as a luxury good. Hence why Margrave Edmund is loaded.
>   * Most of the alpha/omega lore introduced in this chapter will be clarified, expanded, and/or contradicted in future chapters.
>   * Yes, including how the dicks work.
>   * Glenn Fraldarius was an alpha. Unpack _that._
> 

> 
> Feel free to ask additional world-building questions or requests for clarification in the comments. 


	2. two (-21 days)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> General Randolph Bergliez is already dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for in-canon torture and a one-paragraph reference to a consensual knifeplay scene between two underage characters.

**GREAT TREE MOON 1180**

There was a chessboard on the desk of Byleth’s father’s new office, white and black mother-of-pearl inlays in a white marble base. She picked up a bishop, exquisitely carved in ivory and painted in rich pigments, with mithril-and-gold inlays. Each crown had tiny rubies or sapphires. 

Eagle and Lion.

Setting down the bishop, Byleth picked up a pawn instead. Half the size of the face pieces, the figure too abstract to make out a face. 

Faceless pawns. Predictable. Byleth’s nose wrinkled in distaste.

“Whatcha got there, kid?” 

She looked over at her father in the doorway and held up the pawn. Jeralt turned pale, his lips thin.

“A gift?” Byleth asked him. _Or a bribe?_

“Something like that.” Nothing more. It would be one of those conversations, then. 

Byleth set down the pawn, then slid it two spaces forward. She looked at Jeralt.

“Now?” he asked.

She nodded. “We have a board.”

Jeralt grinned and cracked his knuckles, settling down at his new desk. “Sure. Beats playing blind.” He slid a pawn forward to meet Byleth’s.

Byleth slid another pawn forward, and Jeralt captured it. She moved her holy bishop, while Jeralt moved his consort. “Check.”

His eyebrows rose as Byleth took her king out of check. The board began to move in earnest, her holy bishop taking his pawn as his consort and emperor’s pegasus tangled with her king’s pegasus. When his dark bishop took her king’s fortress knight, his brows only rose higher.

When Byleth sacrificed her queen’s fortress knight to Jeralt’s consort, he opened his mouth. “What’re you doing, kid?” 

The weight of the unspoken was visceral upon her.

“Good question.” She pointed his glare back at him as she moved her queen across the board. 

“I asked first.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re playing games with me again, Byleth.”

“Yes. We’re playing chess.” Byleth’s dark bishop swallowed another pawn.

Jeralt scowled. His consort’s pegasus was in the perfect position to swallow her queen, and he was irritated enough to fall into her trap. “Fine. You first, kid.”

She considered her approach, leaning back from the table as if pondering her final move. “You played with the archbishop.”

He was quiet for a long spell, and Byleth knew the move Jeralt was evaluating had nothing to do with the chessboard. “She taught me how to play. On this board.”

A sentimental token, then. The archbishop appealing to nostalgia. She felt ageless, the Archbishop, with her smooth oval face. Something in the eyes seemed older than her youthful face. Perhaps that was why. Or perhaps when she moved in to shake the Archbishop’s hand and caught a whiff of something… ancient. Not unpleasant, but of a world that no longer existed. Almost… alien. 

Why did it smell so familiar?

Byleth tried a parallel approach. “Did you play with my mother as well?”

“I—nice try, kid,” Jeralt said, interrupting himself.

“You told the Archbishop I was born after you left the monastery, so there’s no harm telling me about her now.” 

He scowled, a wordless confirmation, as Byleth slid her dark bishop forward. “Checkmate.”

“What—? Goddess damn it, Byleth!”

She smirked, pleased by her sneak victories. Rare that she got the jump on him, on a chessboard or otherwise. “You walked into that.”

He leaned back in his chair, chuckling. “Guess I did, kiddo. Hope you don’t plan to deploy your students like you do your chess pieces.” He pointed to the pile Byleth sacrificed. 

Byleth wrinkled her nose again. Her father forgot himself sometimes, but Byleth never did. People were not faceless pawns who could be redeployed on a board once a game was over. She was heartless, not unfeeling. “What did you used to tell me?” Byleth asked, tone pointed.

“That chess teaches you how to think, not what to do, yeah yeah.” Jeralt picked up his doomed emperor to study. His face was as unreadable as her own as he asked, “So. Why the Blue Lions?”

The prince flickered across her mind. A rabid, snarling thing, limp in a predator’s teeth. Her father would not like that answer, so Byleth set it aside. There were other answers she could give, and her father deserved the same degree of honesty he afforded her. “They’re too soft. The prince will get them all killed.”

Jeralt busted out laughing. “Seriously? You know those Faerghus brats ride before they walk and get steel for their first name days, right?”

“How old were they when they first stuck a dying man in the field?” she countered, unblinking.

Jeralt’s face shuttered. (Byleth had been nine. Jeralt’s team headed off a bandit raid and had to make sure no one was left. She had nothing better to do, and what use was there in dying men’s suffering? So Byleth picked up a stray dagger and got to work, cutting throats the way her dad taught her on the game they hunted together. He reacted… poorly, but the next day, he gave her an iron sword during training.)

“They’re all like that, kid,” he warned. “Nobles pay someone else to look dying men in the eyes.”

“The princess more than the prince,” Byleth said. “She plays people like I play chess, and she may have good reasons, but I don’t know her reasons. If I were her, I wouldn’t tell them to a stranger, so I can’t judge for myself. The lordling’s class will be fine if he doesn’t trip over his own schemes. You know me best, Dad. Would you put me to work hardening the Blue Lions or softening the Black Eagles?”

Jeralt leaned back, surveying her. “You’ve really thought about this.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” Byleth began to reassemble the board.

Jeralt shook his head. “Dunno, kid. I never know what—or who—will get your attention.”

* * *

**LONE TREE MOON 1185**

Shamir’s report was already outdated. Byleth finds out when one of their scouts crashes into a war council three days later, breathlessly reporting that two Imperial battalions are approaching Garreg Mach. General Bergliez’s vanguard was spotted from the parapets 19 hours after. 

They are now 67 hours into the Second Siege of Garreg Mach. Since that scout crashed their war council 86 hours ago, Byleth has only slept 7 hours total, and none continuously. To say that she is tired is to compare a candle’s flame to the all-consuming perpetual blaze of the Valley of Torment.

Flayn casts healing spells to keep Byleth upright, the magic refreshing enough to keep her wits mostly about her. Wasteful, but with Dimitri at the front lines charging every red cloak he sees, a new crisis erupts for Byleth to resolve every time she lays down.

Seteth had been working day and night with a team to revive Garreg Mach’s siege engines. They’d finally succeeded, launching a massive fiery counterattack that wiped out nearly half of the Imperial forces. Now Byleth steps into the main hall, preparing for their final assault. She looks out beyond the gates. Everything is fire and blood and death. 

Business as usual.

“You are certain you are able to fight, Professor?” Flayn asks as her spell disperses. Her face pinches with concern. “It would be better if you slept.”

Byleth looks at her. “Either we break the siege soon or we all die anyway, so who cares?” 

Somewhere around the 40th hour of the siege, Byleth’s mouth shed its few remaining verbal filters. Flayn is so tired that she only quirks an eyebrow in response.

So Byleth throws herself back into the fray, finally driving back the remainder of Randolph Bergliez’s forces. An honorable sort, Byleth recalls from five years ago. He stays behind with a small squad to cover the main force’s retreat. Loves his soldiers. Byleth respects that. It could have been different if he’d stuck to that.

He doesn’t. Bergliez spots Byleth when she ducks behind a crumbling wall to catch her breath, and sees an opportunity to crush their fragile resistance before it’s truly begun. Sword in hand, he charges, and Byleth, eyes squinting from the ash, breath heavy from smoke and blood vapor, never would have seen it coming had someone not roared, “Professor! Get down!”

Instincts firing, Byleth rolls out of the way and looks back, Sword of the Creator at the ready. Randolph Bergliez’s sword never completed its swing, parried by the One-Eyed Demon of Garreg Mach.

Five years gone and Dimitri is dead and Dimitri is risen, resurrected as death and destroyer of worlds. Always formidable on a battlefield, he’s lost every vestige of self-discipline, transformed into a brutal tempest, inevitable as earthquakes and wildfires. The siege has done little to sap his reserves; if anything, he grows stronger and wilder as the hours pass and more fall on his lance, as if their deaths nourished the wounds of his body and unlocked new potential for devastation within him. Covered in blood and viscera, his eye is unholy bright, reflecting the flaming fields as he laughs in cruel delight. He makes quick work of the great General Bergliez, pinning him with the tip of his lance.

“Capture him,” Dimitri growls, and the nearby Knights of Seiros scramble to comply. He still has his birthright aura of command, and here at the Second Battle for Garreg Mach, no one can smell tragedy upon him.

Dimitri turns to her, unholy light extinguished, blood-splattered cape dancing in the wind. “Letting your guard down in the middle of battle. Pathetic.”

 _Avoid antagonistic language and positively reinforce good behavior,_ Manuela had told Byleth, and there isn’t much better behavior than going out of his way to save her life. Even with the acid tone, he’s right that she dropped her guard, so Byleth should grit her teeth and thank Dimitri. 

What comes out instead is: “Oh, _fuck off._ ”

Right, no verbal filter.

Nothing in Dimitri’s deadened expression changes, but Byleth senses he did _not_ like that. He slinks off, and amidst the stench of death, there’s an undercut of pure-sweet honey.

_Whatever._

Byleth sits a minute more before standing up and marching herself to the entrance hall. Tidy, efficient Annette is already waiting with initial reports. “What’s our status?”

“I’ve obtained early casualty reports and a preliminary structural damage assessment from the engineers,” Annette says. Cedarwood on an autumn breeze wafts around her. Good news, then. “Uh, is everything okay with His Highness? He stormed past me a few minutes ago.”

Byleth blinks at her. “Right, silly question. Sorry. Do you want to sit down with me to review the reports, Professor? You could use a break.”

“If I stop moving, I’ll die,” Byleth replies. “I have about two hours before I fall over like one of those magic dolls you used to make dance for orphans. Read me the highlights between check-ins with the battalion commanders.”

Annette’s reports keep Byleth awake while she makes her rounds, sending Catherine and the best-rested knights to pursue the retreating forces. It’s much better news than Byleth expected overall.

Eventually, they make it to the cathedral, currently housing overflow from the infirmary. While Mercedes provides updated casualty reports, Byleth glances around. 

“Was Dimitri in the cathedral earlier?” Byleth asks Mercedes.

“No, Professor.” Mercedes is mid-heal on an archer’s open thigh wound, the smell of fresh-baked bread rising as the flesh knits together. “Sylvain mentioned he saw Dimitri going below.”

“Thanks,” Byleth says when she’s already halfway out the cathedral doors. Dungeons, probably. Something throbs in her temple. She’d grab Sylvain first to talk to Bergliez—he’s her best interrogator, can work miracles with a jar of ale and a pack of rolled-up smoking herbs—but Byleth has about 50 minutes left before her body mutinies, and Dimitri and Sylvain in close proximity is a bad idea anyway.

Byleth doesn’t find Dimitri in the dungeons, which mildly intensifies the throbbing in her temple. Majorly intensifying the throbbing in her temple is not finding Randolph Bergliez on the prisoner roll sheets. The acting warden confirms Bergliez never made it to the dungeon.

Taken directly to an interrogation room, then. Byleth’s temples pound like someone’s dropping boulders on them.

It’s at about the thirty-five-minute mark that Byleth reaches the interrogation chamber and hears, “…please. I can't die here… ”

“A beast of your depravity, prattling on about family? How amusing.”

“As though you could understand… such a thing as love… you heartless monster!”

Was that Bergliez? Byleth moves silently towards the door. It’s a sign of how far lost Dimitri is in his mania that he does not register her approach. 

Bergliez is chained down in the center of the room, Dimitri sitting astride the chair in front of him. The table’s been thrown to the side, only splinters remaining, and Dimitri has Edelgard’s dagger in his hands.

“You are a monster too, General. You have just yet to realize it. A monster who thinks he's a man… despicable!” Dimitri practically spits the word in Bergliez’s face. “As a general, you must have killed countless souls without a shred of mercy. Do you still remember the sound of them begging, just as you're begging now? Or, now that your life is at its end, will you hold to the lie that your hands are not stained red with blood?”

General Randolph Bergliez is already dead. 

True, Byleth could shut this down. She might— _might_ —be able to talk down Dimitri, but there’s no way even Sylvain will get Bergliez to talk now, and using him as a ransom or a bargaining chip in a prisoner exchange is off the table when he’ll regale the Empire with stories of the prince-in-exile’s “hospitality.” 

Dimitri’s brutal reputation served him well in the wilds, where he teetered between bogeyman and folk hero, but now Byleth must build a worthy resistance with Dimitri’s controversial history weighing down every interaction. She’s already hinted to more than one wary merchant and anxious lord that Dimitri is not the one making the day-to-day decisions, that it will be Byleth, and not Dimitri, who will deliver the better world Edelgard describes in her manifesto. Thus Byleth’s rebellion must maintain the illusion of moral high ground to keep their momentum, and letting Dimitri torture prisoners undercuts everything she has claimed to the outside world.

So Bergliez is dead, but he can still be of some use to Byleth in his final minutes. He can show her how far Dimitri has fallen.

“This… this is war. I did what I had to for the Empire… for the people… for my family!” 

Byleth rubs her throbbing forehead. _Stop baiting him, you idiot._

Unfair. She’s the one letting this unfold. It’s not General Bergliez’s fault he’s the sacrificial lamb to Byleth’s curiosity. Nor is it his fault that Byleth needs her curiosity sated, but doesn't want it to be.

Dimitri chuckles, throaty and cruel. “So, you are piling up corpses for the _people_ and for your _family_ ,” he sneers. The smirk on his mouth sickens Byleth. “I am doing the same for the salvation of the dead… after all is said and done, we are both murderers. Both stained. Both monsters.”

 _Both monsters._ The resignation in Dimitri’s voice is sharp like splintered bones.

“You're wrong!” Bergliez cries, his defiant facade crumbling. 

“Am I?” Dimitri toys with the dagger. “I can smell the rotting flesh upon your hands even now, General.”

Byleth watches Dimitri play with Edelgard’s dagger, and her mind transports her to a jewel-box garden in the nobles’ district of Fhirdiad, a party she’d snuck into alongside her father’s men. The haughty omega girl with bouncing blonde curls who whispered lurid fantasies in Byleth’s ear. A feather bed and the girl tied up beneath her, wide-eyed with fear and lust as Byleth’s dagger’s hilt slipped inside her soaking slit.

“Enough!” Bergliez is nearly hysterical as Dimitri gently drags the dagger tip gently over Bergliez’s face. Shame this is real; under different circumstances, Byleth might enjoy the show. “That's enough!”

Byleth agrees. 

Dimitri does not. He stands, throwing the chair aside, and Bergliez yelps when it shatters against the wall. “I won't kill you right away, my fellow monster. Unless you object to watching your friends die. One… by… one.”

He moves closer to Bergliez, tracing the dagger tip around Bergliez’s eye socket. Bergliez whimpers. “If so, I will do you the service of removing your eyes first so that—”

A single drop of blood falls from Bergliez’s skin. _That’s_ enough. That’s _too_ much.

Since her union with Sothis, the ‘whip’ aspect of Sword of the Creator has become less whippy and more an extension of Byleth. It’s simple to slide the blades directly into Bergliez’s gut and slice open the abdominal arteries. Not Byleth’s preferred way to kill, as it’s rather painful, but it’s quick.

Also, messy. Dimitri gets painted in a thick layer of fresh blood, and based on the sputtering, he didn’t close his mouth in time. _Whoops._

As Randolph Bergliez chokes out his final words, Dimitri roars in pure animus. His hair is crimson, his armor blood wine. He drags his shaking hand across his blood-coated face, only succeeding in smearing it around.

“What is the meaning of this?” Dimitri bellows at Byleth.

Byleth, still lacking a verbal filter, says: “Mercy kill. That speech was torture.”

She got her answer. She intends to leave it there. 

Dimitri does not. Quick and fluid, he stands before her, blocking the exit. “Yet you stayed to listen,” he says, turning his scorn upon her now, “and you did not intervene? Did you wish to see him writhe upon the hook as well, faced with the truth of his own depravity? Or perhaps you recognized yourself in my words, Professor? Your sword cut down many these past days.”

 _Don’t take the bait._ _He’s trying to provoke you to justify his twisted worldview. You may be the Ashen Demon, you may be heartless and sadistic, but you draw your lines and you hold them, and you learn from the lines you didn’t._

“I don’t do torture.” Each word is clipped and cold. “I will not be part of an army that does. Is that clear?”

He laughs, and laughs, and laughs, twisted and broken, dripping blood and scented with wars past and present and future. “Oh, Professor! How quaint to hear the _Ashen Demon_ speak as if she could not fill graveyards with all those who have fallen to her blade!”

Dimitri is enormous, shoulders thrown wide and cape flaring as he looms over her, robs her of her space. Byleth does not flinch, but he has her cornered. Like _he’s_ the predator and _she’s_ the prey. “Would you deny it, then? Would you deny your monstrous works?”

_Pretender._

So Byleth, languid, smooth, micro-steps into his space, her gaze relentless upon his eye. The vicious stalking thing coiled inside her stirs to life. “I never have. I kill, but I don’t torture,” Byleth says, voice dropping to a purring, sensuous tone, “unless they ask me nicely. Unless they _beg._ ”

Dimitri freezes on the spot. Paralyzed, fixed in her fathomless hollows, his chin trembling to stay straight. Another micro-step, and there’s that honey, the bittersweetness that promises sounds in color and every breath like an aria.

 _There._ The tiny upward tilt of the chin, the war not to bare his bloodstained throat to her lost in fractions of inches. The faint, sub-vocal whine, ripped from the throat he aches to present for her teeth. Byleth lets her lips curl upward just enough that he knows she knows her triumph.

“Do you think me so easily swayed as the fool you once knew? Your Dimitri is dead,” he snarls at her, but he’s lost, and she can hear it, so her lips curl more. “All that remains is the repulsive, blood-stained monster you see before you.”

Then: “If you do not approve of what I have become, then kill me.”

_What?_

Her mouth flattens of its own volition at that last part. This isn’t taunting. Dimitri is… he’s subdued, almost longing. As if all he’s ever wanted in this world was her sword in his heart.

Byleth slips around Dimitri, barely paying attention as he yells something about flesh falling from bones. Suddenly she’s exhausted, her body claiming the debt she’s incurred over the last 90 hours. 

She needs a moment. Byleth finds a quiet place and sinks down against the wall. Her breath is even, calm. This does not undo her.

_If you do not approve of what I have become, then kill me._

She wipes at her face, unsure if it’s blood, sweat, or tears she sweeps away. It doesn’t matter. She closes her eyes. 

(Byleth just needs a moment.)

* * *

When Byleth wakes, she’s lying on her bed in her old quarters, still covered in the blood and grime of battle. Someone pulled off her boots and unhooked her breastplate.

The way the light streams through the windows tells Byleth she slept through the rest of yesterday and well into the afternoon of the next day at a minimum. Her stomach gurgles, but the disgusting film of her skin makes Byleth wary of going to the dining hall without stopping first at the bathhouse.

Sighing, she drags herself out of bed to wash off and find out what’s fallen apart while she slept. She stops to grab her coat, intending to drop it with the laundress, but it’s nowhere to be found. 

Huh. She must have dropped it during the battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Byleth and Jeralt’s chess game is the [Immortal Game](https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1018910) between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritzky in 1851. The chess pieces’ design is based off the [Lewis Chessmen](https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/scottish-history-and-archaeology/lewis-chess-pieces/). Piece names were adjusted to align with in-game history/classes.
> 
> I appreciate all of the comments and kudos so far! Feel free to keep asking for clarification on lore anything else; I welcome all feedback. If you want to message me privately, I'll be monitoring [my old Bioware fandom tumblr](https://adamnrayofsunshine.tumblr.com/), which I may bring into this decade sometime soon.


	3. three (-7 days)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if we‘d hugged the kid?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter for ableist language and derogatory remarks in general. It should be noted that there are in-universe comments that correlate Dimitri's mental illness and his presentation. However, one did _not_ cause the other, and vice versa. They do, however, inform each other, as Dimitri's had somewhat different experiences as a result. We'll get to that.

**HARPSTRING MOON 1180**

The Blue Lions were relentless optimists, perhaps to the point of overconfidence. This past weekend was a body blow.

Sunday had been, Byleth gathered, the most controversial mock battle in the over 200-year-history of Garreg Mach’s Officers Academy. As she predicted, the Blue Lions eliminated themselves early by charging forward and then scrambling to protect each other rather than meaningfully prioritizing defense. The Prince held on far longer than Byleth expected, which she noted for later. It took Noble Guy, Vampire, Sleepy, and The Princess together to subdue him.

Once the Blue Lions were off the field, the battle came down to four Golden Deer and five Black Eagles. Lordling used Haircut to lure out Sleepy, and That Chick Who Met Dad One Time took him out, but both fell to Vampire. Meanwhile, after holding out in back for a while, Magelet darted forward to take out Lil’ Puncher before she fell to Brigid’s sword. By the end, The Princess, Vampire, and Brigid had been converging on a wounded Lordling’s location. Vampire had cast a bolt at a wounded Lordling. The final blow of the match.

Or it would have been, if it weren’t for the dark magic trap that sprang at the exact same moment Vampire cast the bolt. It took out all three remaining Black Eagles at the same moment that Vampire’s spell hit Lordling.

That set off an hour-long argument between Skeptic and both remaining houses’ leadership. Once Skeptic ruled that Vampire’s spell did not hit Lordling until after the magic trap eliminated the Black Eagles, Princess alleged that Magelet had been casting to maintain the magic trap, which would disqualify the Golden Deer. Lordling, however, argued that Magelet was gifted enough to create a self-reinforcing magic trap, an extremely advanced spell. Magelet proved she could, in fact, cast the trap spell, but not one the same size as the one that triggered on the field. She claimed this was due to magical exhaustion. The Archbishop then intervened and declared the only tie victory in the history of Garreg Mach, and no one was happy.

The Blue Lions didn’t even have another class to commiserate with.

Fine by Byleth. Better they failed in low-stakes war games than on a real mission. There had been little time to train the Blue Lions this week between observing training sessions, researching school resources, proposing a course schedule, lesson plan, and preliminary training regimens for approval by Seteth, and figuring out where the outhouses were. Watching the mock battle taught her about them as a team. She would pick them back up, stand them on their feet, and make sure they did not fall again.

Now if only her students would stop apologizing.

“Professor.” The prince stood at Byleth’s desk. Perfect posture and sad eyes. Annoying. “On behalf of the Blue Lions, I wish to apologize again for our shameful performance at the mock battle—”

This again? How dull. They lost. Time to move forward.

“It’s fine.” Byleth cut off his apology. “Please take your seat.”

The prince’s face fell. “You say that, but I can only imagine what you think of us after you agreed to—”

“I said it’s fine.” She thought they were a bunch of kids with limited training and no idea how to fight together. Nothing she couldn’t straighten out the way Byleth’s dad straightened her out.

“Surely you cannot be so indifferent to our failure—”

“Dimitri.” His name popped out of Byleth’s mouth, quick and sharp. “I. Don’t. Care. That. You. Lost. Now sit down.”

That got his attention. His eyes narrowed on her, all that alpha bravado (was he?) coming to the fore. “Perhaps you do not care, Professor, but—”

“Sit. Down.”

Snapping his mouth shut, Dimitri returned to his desk, glaring at her along with Anger Issues and Really Huge Guy.

Byleth passed out the sheets. “What is this, Professor?” Knight Girl asked as Byleth handed her a page.

“Your syllabus,” Byleth said. “Don’t lose it.” Her hand was still cramped from writing out eight copies longhand.

“Oh, so we do have a syllabus!” Small Ginger smiled brightly, but it faded as she read through. “Oh, uh, this is… uh, ah… well, we’d better get started… yesterday?”

“Or last week before the mock battle.” Anger Issues shot Byleth a dirty look.

“Holy shit.” Large Ginger had his head in his hands. “I’m gonna die. This class is going to kill me.”

“Language, Sylvain,” Dimitri said, but he too paled as he studied the syllabus.

“This class is not going to kill you. Just the opposite.” Byleth walked up to the board and picked up a piece of chalk. “I don’t care that you lost some game, and I don’t care about your house’s honor. If you learn one thing from me this year, let it be this.”

Written on the board was HOW TO GET PAID.

“Get paid?” Mouse Boy raised his hand. “Uh, professor, get paid for what?”

Byleth set the chalk down. “Dead mercenaries don’t get paid. Good mercenaries finish a job and stay alive, so they get paid. Let’s get all of you paid. Sound good?”

After several glancing looks, there was a reluctant chorus of, “Yes, Professor.”

“Good.” Byleth flipped the board over to reveal her sketch of the initial positions from the mock battle. “Let’s start with the mock battle.”

* * *

“So when, uh… name?” Byleth pointed at Church Girl.

“Mercedes,” Church Girl said.

“Right.” Byleth gestured back to her mock-up of the battle. She drew an arrow to indicate the movement. “So when Mercedes moves forward to heal, uh, name?”

“I’m Annette.” Small Ginger looked ready to cry for some reason. 

“—Annette, she left, um, sorry, name?”

“Felix,” Anger Issues growled at her. Yeesh.

“—Felix open to the noble who kept saying his name—”

“Ferdinand von Aegir,” the Blue Lions said in unison.

“Right, that guy charging at—” Byleth paused. _Shit._ She pointed at Anger Issues again. “Uh, name?”

“ _Felix!_ ” Anger Issues yelled. Whatever. Byleth barely remembered the names of her dad’s mercs, which was only awkward when she woke up naked next to one.

“Right, that forced him to pull back instead of covering Marissa’s—”

“Mercedes’s,” Dimitri corrected. A cracking sound came from his desk.

“—Mercedes’s left flank, at which point you lost your primary healer, and the rest of you went down from there. A good example why protecting battlefield healers and medics is top priority.”

Church girl’s lips pursed as she blinked. Good at pushing down anger, that one. “Annie was vulnerable. I had to protect my friend.”

Wait, which one was Annie? Was that Small Ginger? “All of your friends fell eventually,” Byleth pointed out, gesturing to the X’d-our final positions of each student. “I explained this earlier. Annie would have been able to retreat behind um… I’m sorry?” She looked at Really Huge Guy.

“His name,” Dimitri snapped, “is _Dedue_.”

Byleth stared at Dimitri. What got into him?

“Right, Annie could have retreated behind Dedue, had Dedue maintained his position as ordered instead of breaking away to fend off the opponents attacking Dimitri.” Who had been handling himself just fine, despite his having kicked off this entire mess by charging the enemy. Also, Byleth would like to understand why their highest-value asset, the crown prince of their kingdom, was the _vanguard._ “Don’t send out valuable ransoms as your vanguards” was Mercenary 101.

“My foremost duty is to His Highness,” Really Huge Guy said, crossing his arms.

Byleth blinked, stunned by this class's thick-headedness. “And how’d that work out for His Highness?”

Really Huge Guy stayed silent, but Byleth could feel his gaze boring holes in her skull. Fine. Could take a couple tries, but he might be her fastest convert as long as Byleth’s pitch involved Dimitri’s safety. It was the Honor Gang who would give Byleth headaches.

Speaking of… 

“This isn’t right!” Annie thumped the desk. “Mercie was just trying to help me when I was in trouble. How is that a bad thing?”

Byleth kept her face as even as she could. “Healers have a responsibility to look out for the overall health of the group, not risk their necks to save one friend.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Church Girl said, eyes glossy. “Are you really suggesting I should let my best friend die to keep the group safe? Isn’t she part of the group?”

Byleth had just explained to the class how that shouldn’t have happened in the first place to illustrate the importance of holding defensive lines. What was happening here?

“Mercedes is right,” Mouse Boy piped up, voice shaky. “Our duty as future knights and protectors of the realm is to shield those in harm’s way.” 

“Which is more effective if you don’t die.” Byleth grit her teeth. What was with these kids? Did they all have a death wish or something?

Knight Girl stood up to face her. “Professor, do you not understand sacrificing yourself for the greater good is at times necessary? Many of Faerghus’s greatest heroes laid their down their lives to protect their lords and their comrades.”

Byleth curled her fingers, resisting the urge to clench. “Those heroes had to live long enough to get a reputation as heroes first. Soldiers who sacrifice themselves in maiden battles are footnotes.”

The air… changed. Smoke, ice, and ozone filled her nostrils. Byleth didn’t need one of the nobles’ fancy noses to know she just set off a trap.

Dimitri stormed out first, Really Huge Guy calling after him. Anger Issues out-stomped him despite being shorter and slimmer. Knight Girl stopped to pick up her books and glare at Byleth.

“You have no concept of honor, do you?” Knight Girl snarled, and Byleth couldn’t argue with that.

Okay. Something happened and it was Byleth’s fault. Large Ginger was on his feet now, glancing between the door and Byleth. Church Girl and Small Ginger were whispering angrily to each other, while Mouse Boy glared at her with surprising force.

She pointed at the Large Ginger. “You there, Large Ginger.”

“Ouch, Professor.” Large Ginger winked to hide his wince. “Guess I need to work harder to get the attention of someone as beautiful as you.”

Byleth mentally amended her label to ‘Sex Pest.’ “Can you tell me what just happened?”

Sex Pest's eyes glittered icy cold. “You just told the man Glenn Fraldarius died to protect, along with Glenn’s younger brother and fiancée, that no one’s going to remember him.”

Oh. Whoops. Byleth wasn’t the best conversationalist, but she usually didn’t alienate entire rooms with such… efficiency. “Thank you for your honesty.”

“Sure. All right, Dedue will go after His Highness, so could one of you go to the stables to talk to Ingrid? She’ll be in her pegasus’s stall, third one from the back. You, Ashe, you own a bunch of knight books, right?”

Mouse Boy blinked. “I own four books, and how do you know that?”

“Yeah, that’s like a nerd number of books to own. Go talk to Ingrid about nerd stuff. I’ll handle Felix first, then come find you guys while the professor figures out how not to piss everyone off for afternoon sessions.”

Interesting. So Sex Pest was the peacemaker and prioritized Anger Issues over Knight Girl. Unclear whether that was also over Dimitri, but he seemed to trust Really Huge Guy to handle the prince. Byleth made notes of a few combinations she might try once the current crisis passed.

Once Sex Pest and Mouse Boy left, Small Ginger and Church Girl packed up their things. “I was really excited about this year, you know,” Small Ginger said in a quiet voice.

Ouch. Byleth might have been heartless, but she felt that one in her chest.

“Let’s go, Annie,” Church Girl said, shooting Byleth a meaningful look as she took Annie’s hand. “I don’t know if there is anything worth learning in this class.”

As soon as they were gone, Byleth thumped her head on her new desk. Shit.

A slow, steady clap echoed in her ears. Byleth looked up, and Sothis sat on a back-row desk, a wide smirk upon her face. “What an enlightening first lesson! You will certainly leave an impression upon this generation’s future scions.”

Sarcasm. Real helpful. “Do you have anything useful to say?”

“Perhaps you should start by learning their names and using them, rather than the shallow appellations you have applied to each one inside your head.”

Damn. Sothis had a point. It wasn’t personal; most of the time Byleth wasn't around anyone besides her father long enough to bother getting to know them. Towns and people drifted in and out so quickly. “Point,” Byleth conceded. “Anything else?”

“I believe several apologies are in order.”

She banged her head on the desk. Ugh, Sothis was right. However unintentional, her remark was cruel, and Byleth did not do unnecessary suffering.

* * *

Byleth started with a class-wide apology during the afternoon session, which the Blue Lions accepted grudgingly enough for them to get to work. She offered a more complete apology to Knight Girl, who Sothis reminded her was named “Ingrid.” Ingrid, in turn, accepted with chilly grace.

Anger Issues (“Felix!”) challenged her to a fight. Once Byleth tossed him into the dirt a half dozen times and promised to teach him her side-pivot feint, he declared the whole thing pointless, as Glenn was dead and didn’t give a shit about history books.

Dimitri (“Why do you remember that one’s name?”) was tougher to pin down. Byleth knew when someone was avoiding her, so she settled on calling him to her desk after class. He stood ramrod straight but fussed with his hands, fingers digging into the armored gauntlets hard enough to leave slight dents.

“I owe you a personal apology,” Byleth said. “I didn’t know about your friend. I’m sorry that I suggested his sacrifice was only worth a footnote.”

“It is no matter. I have already accepted your apology, Professor.” The steel of his metal gauntlets twinged. Wild he wore those even in class. “You could not have known.”

Untrue. Byleth could have paid more attention or read up about the Tragedy. Hadn’t he mentioned it when she asked Dimitri to tell her more about himself? Clearly it was never far from his mind. “It doesn’t matter. There were better ways to say what I said. I could have chosen those.”

“Such as?” He looked up at her for the first time.

“Such as it’s better to stay alive so you can keep protecting the people you love,” Byleth answered. Took her some time with Sothis to come up with that, but they got there.

Dimitri cocked his head at her, looking directly at her for the first time since that day. Reassessing. “I see. I would ask your forgiveness for my short temper as well, Professor. Once I calmed myself, I read through your syllabus. Your lesson plan is precisely what I hoped a mercenary as talented as yourself might teach.”

“Oh?” Unexpected.

“Yes. You were… not wrong, Professor, that history will likely not remember Glenn. I would prefer that my classmates live long enough to make their own marks upon history.”

Huh. Maybe he did get it. 

“Although I might suggest you do the other Blue Lions the courtesy of learning their names,” Dimitri added, his gaze narrowed.

Byleth snorted. “You’re right. I’m working on it. Perhaps… ?” She evaluated whether to ask him this. Would it look weak to ask her student for help? No, she decided. When she’d wanted to learn a heal spell, her father had tracked down a former cleric to teach her. “I have noticed you excel at speaking kindly to others.”

Dimitri blinked at her, startled. That thin flush of pink, stronger now than before. “That is… generous of you to say, but I have no particular talent in that regard.”

“You do,” Byleth said, punctuating with a nod, “and I don’t. It’s fine in my line of work, but that’s not going to cut it here.”

He stroked his chin. “Huh. I… I see. Well, I do not know how well any lesson I provide will serve you, but I am willing to make an attempt. Perhaps we can discuss this over the evening meal?”

“Sure. I’ll be free after the vespers bell. And, um, for what it’s worth… ” Byleth groped around in her head for something nice-shaped to say. “You remember your friend. He’s not a footnote.”

There, that was the sort of polite thing people said to people who had lost loved ones, right? Byleth had no idea. She was asking for help learning to be nice to her own students for a reason.

Dimitri stilled, and now he studied her, and for once his eyes were opaque. At least he’d stopped fiddling with his hands. “You are right. I will never forget anyone I lost that day. Thank you again for the apology, Professor.”

Dimitri left, and Byleth watched him leave, mystified.

(Later that night, Byleth wondered: _who will remember you, when your father is gone? Will anyone miss you? Will you leave your mark on even a single soul?_ )

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

The next two weeks are all meetings: with healers, with builders, with soldiers. Word spreads quicker than they expected of their upset victory, and a flurry of owls arrives from merchants and mercenary companies offering their services, lords loyal to Faerghus swearing fealty to Dimitri, even a few carefully-worded inquiries from Alliance groups.

The first few days after the siege, Dimitri is near catatonic in his post-battle crash. He still eats none of the food Byleth brings, but sometimes she catches him watching her briefly before squinting away as if she were too bright to gaze upon directly. Her conversation with Felix becomes a distant memory with so much else on her plate, until it isn’t.

They convene a war council the morning Rodrigue’s owl arrives, his likely having crossed paths with their own owl advising a delay. He’s now requesting additional time to marshal his forces and reach Ailell. Apparently there are “concerns about higher leadership” among several minor lords in Fraldarius territory. It’s a euphemism for, according to Sylvain, “a bunch of up-their-ass alphas who don’t want to be caught taking orders from an omega and a commoner.”

 _Not a commoner,_ Byleth thinks to herself as she reads the missive. She passes it to Seteth, who rolls his eyes but holds his tongue, then to Gilbert.

Gilbert sinks heavier into his seat as he reads, fractured light etching the grooves of his face deep. “This sort of callous disrespect is why the truth of His Highness’s presentation was suppressed.”

There are about eighty-five layers of bullshit to unpack in that sentence. Judging by Felix’s face, he can smell every one of them. Alas, both past and present Dimitri would be angry if Byleth tried.

“The old man will wrangle them into submission,” Felix assures the room, but his leg taps a swift jig, and Byleth catches a rust-note of stress in the air. “He can bribe the holdouts with tax breaks and land grants and coronation seating arrangements. Fucking politics.”

Byleth fiddles with her quill. “He won’t try to… ?” She trails off, uncomfortable. Ignores the stalking predator inside her clawing her abdomen at the thought.

To Felix’s credit, he takes the question seriously. After a moment, he murmurs, “No. No surprise betrothals. The old man got burned on his last arranged marriage.”

_Ouch._

Gilbert’s face turns purple but he says nothing. Byleth, for her part, feels the vicious stalking thing in her chest put up its head, assessing, and then quiet at Felix’s reassurance… for now. It’s been making itself heard more lately.

Sylvain leans back, one hand behind his head. “My dad’s already sent a letter inquiring. His vassals are going to be worse. Think of it as a preview of coming attractions for the Western Kingdom, assuming we drop kick Cornelia out of Fhirdiad.” 

His face stays smooth even as he angles himself towards Felix’s seat as if to press comfort towards him. Felix is already the living embodiment of tension, but not even Byleth misses the slow curl and constriction of his body as the discussion continues. 

“You sure you’re not secretly an alpha, professor? That’d be real handy right about now,” Sylvain adds with a wry grin and cold gaze.

“Not an alpha,” Byleth replies by reflex. Sylvain had been one of the few alphas in the ‘alpha’ camp during the arguments over Byleth’s presentation back during the academy days. She’d accidentally walked in on his disturbingly well-attended off-hours multi-chalkboard and magic-enhanced presentation titled ‘Why Professor Eisner Is Definitely an Alpha (and Fucks).’ Byleth, intervening before Dimitri could challenge Sylvain to a duel, assigned Sylvain a month’s detention and released him after a week because they’d played nine men morris to a deadlock.

“His Highness must avoid such attachments for now,” Gilbert advises. “If he is to ascend to the throne by his own right, he must remain unclaimed.”

Sylvain snorts, amused, though he never takes his eyes off Byleth. “Can’t imagine that being too much of a problem with his growl-up.” _Troll._ “His skincare regimen is bathing in the blood of his enemies.”

Felix releases some tension by biting Sylvain’s good arm. “Hey!”

Gilbert is far less amused. His mouth curls in disgust. _Feral behavior._ Byleth can see it all over his face. 

“That is no way to speak of His Highness, Sylvain,” Gilbert finally says, not bothering with correcting Felix.

Once it becomes apparent they’re going in circles, Byleth adjourns the meeting. Seteth lingers, studying her. “His sentiments regarding omega behavior concern me.”

Surprising. Their one real conversation on the topic was… strained, to say the least. Nonetheless, Byleth waves off Seteth’s concerns. “Don’t worry about Gilbert. The guilt overwhelms everything else.”

“Including the man he intends to place on the throne.” Seteth’s brows knit together.

Gilbert is no radical; he’s so steadfast that a king trusted him with the molding of his heir. Frustrating as Byleth finds his rigidity, in this, Gilbert is worth his weight in gold. If the need to restore the Blaiddyd monarchy as atonement for Duscur makes him a fanatic, well, Byleth needs that blind zealotry burning bright, because in another life he’d be the sort trusted to help select the alpha that would claim Dimitri and rule on his behalf, make him consort to his birthright.

Byleth will not let that happen.

“We need his belief, and Rodrigue’s. You know we can’t muster enough troops under the Church of Seiros’s banner.” Byleth is flattered, if perplexed, by Rhea leaving the Church in her care, but it would have been helpful had Rhea put that in writing somewhere. Without a formal directive, Byleth’s claim as Acting Archbishop is tenuous at best. “We need a king’s banner, and Blaiddyd loyalists need a Blaiddyd.”

Seteth gives Byleth a long, searching gaze, the sort that Rhea and Edelgard so often gave her. She, as ever, remains opaque. “If only there were someone who outranked even kings and archbishops, one who could raise their own banner.”

Right. 

_That._

The worst-case scenario.

Byleth touches her stomach, ignoring the tingle. “You’ve lost me.”

“Have I now.” Seteth purses his lips, arms crossed. “Well, if you gain any sudden insight, my door is always open.”

“Probably won’t.” Byleth shrugs, laconic, at Seteth before backing out of the war council room.

* * *

Once she’s outside, Byleth spots Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid talking on the bridge. Sylvain subtly waves her over. She’s not sure why their real meetings happen outside the war room. Maybe it lets them pretend they’re still bucking authority, that they aren’t the last adults left in the room.

Ingrid twists a crumpled sheet of parchment in her hands. She hands it to Byleth. “Ashe finished inventory from the cellar break-in last night.” 

Byleth studies the list. Approximately three days’ rations for one person, mostly hardtack and dried goby. A single wine barrel, Hyrm Burgundy third press, cheap and watered-down. Subsistence quantities, and nothing fresh or flavorful. “Any injuries?”

“None,” Ingrid replies. “The guard had stepped away to relieve himself.”

Sylvain smirks. “Turns out the guard’s nickname down at the tavern is ‘Whizzerd’ due to his _very_ small—”

Ingrid gives Sylvain her battle glare and he clamps his mouth shut. “The door itself was torn clean off its hinges.”

A solid iron door, installed after the last time someone stole a wine barrel from the cellars. Byleth winces at the memory.

“Annette’s setting up a ward until the blacksmith completes repairs,” Ingrid continues. “Unfortunately, the guard saw the thief from behind.”

Byleth’s stomach twists. “Did he recognize the thief?”

Ingrid shoots her an incredulous look. “He’s pretty hard to miss in the giant blue cape, Professor.”

 _Damn it._ Byleth turns to Sylvain. “Can we keep this quiet?”

“Already on it,” Sylvain says with a wry grin that does not reach his eyes. “Won’t be cheap, as usual. Maybe you could assign more pretty omegas as guards, Professor? I could buy their silence with something far more valuable than gold.” Sylvain wriggles his hips, and Felix’s teeth connect with the same spot on Sylvain’s forearm as his last bite.

Ingrid ignores them both. Her mouth wobbles as she fights down whatever emotion grips her. “He took so little. He could have asked. Why didn’t he ask?”

Felix leans on the bridge rail, gazing out at the tower. “Animals don’t ask. They mindlessly destroy.” He says it with far less bite than usual.

“Really, Felix?” Ingrid snaps, eyes flashing as her scent went glacial. Sylvain puts a warning hand on her shoulder and Ingrid steadies herself, smoothing her face and scent back to neutral, approachable. Felix scowls at her.

Five years gone and Ingrid and Sylvain still fear crossing the line, while Felix, spoiling for a fight they’ll never give him, writhes in frustration. Byleth changes the subject. “Where is he setting up?”

Felix loosens a bit. “The Goddess Tower would be my guess.”

It’s a logical choice. The tower is isolated from the monastery, close to a well, and has only one point of entry. Surprise attacks would be nearly impossible. He’d feel safe nesting there.

From an illogical perspective, well… Byleth’s mind circles back to a wish never made, a kiss that never happened, and a reunion never expected. Her heart would ache if she had one. “When does he go to ground?”

“By week’s end, based on the rate his scent has been shifting,” Felix says. Much sooner than expected, but he’s more confident this time, and surprisingly calm. Based on the strange iterations of Felix’s scent these past weeks, he’s been affected by Dimitri’s coming heat. Makes sense they’re linked; the Shield stands sentinel while the King is at his most vulnerable.

“Maybe we could put some supplies in the tower?” Ingrid offers. Now she twists her hands around themselves. She isn’t built to do nothing.

Felix rolls his eyes. “Sure, and maybe afterward Sylvain can try hugging the boar again.” 

Byleth sneaks a glance at Sylvain, a single eyebrow wordlessly asking ‘you told him?’ Sylvain, looking sheepish, shrugs with his sling and mouths ‘sorry.’ 

Ingrid briefly looks appalled, then resigned. She slams her fist onto the bridge rail. Chilling anger, the scent of melting icebergs, seeps from her pores. “If he’d just take the silphium… ”

“But he won’t,” Sylvain reminds her, gentle but firm. Sandalwood and heavy musk.

Jeralt used to track thunderstorms with the pain in his knee. Byleth feels this storm approach in sour notes and the vein thrumming in her forehead.

“I just don’t _get_ it.” Ingrid scrubs her face. “Two weeks ago we found him promising _my_ very dead fiancé Edelgard’s head and now he’s just… stealing supplies? We’re going to let him go through this with any sort of support? What if the heat makes him sicker? What would Glenn even want with Edelgard’s—”

“I believe we’re getting off track,” Byleth interjects, but she puts a hand on Ingrid’s shoulder. Ingrid places her hand atop Byleth’s, squeezing it tightly. Better that Ingrid work through her feelings about Dimitri’s delusions away from Dimitri.

“You’re expecting sense from that thing,” Felix says to Ingrid. He grips the bridge rail so hard his knuckles turn white. “You’d see more logic from a real boar.”

“He must have gone through heats before, Ingrid,” Byleth reminds her, but she’s looking directly at Felix when she says it. Felix pointedly ignores her.

“There are plenty of reasons someone might not want to suppress,” Sylvain says, and the venom in his voice matches the acrid twist of his scent. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be dependent on rare, expensive herbs to control his heats, or maybe he doesn’t feel good when he takes it, or maybe it’s his damn body and he doesn’t want to be told what to do with it.”

This argument again. Byleth’s head throbs as all three of them turn to her, varying degrees of resentment in their faces and scents. “We went over this already. Your old bond bites aren’t enough to ward off the scents the Imperial demonic beasts emit. Until Hanneman comes up with a solution, it’s dangerous for you to go without suppressants.”

“Except Dimitri,” Sylvain points out with an arched brow.

The only one of the Lions who’s never had a bond bite. Yet even at the heights of his blood-lust, Dimitri avoids the empire’s demonic beasts by reflex. Byleth suspects Dimitri learned that lesson the hard way. “I can’t reason with Dimitri right now, and I can’t keep him off a battlefield, so it’s even more important someone on the field is suppressed to cover him.”

True and not true, but not a lie. Byleth’s mouth is full of those. Five years gone and the Byleth’s lessons on how to keep each other alive still get lost amidst duty and honor and love. They’re all too eager to throw their lives away for one another. Byleth must take every edge she finds to bring them home safe. She can live with their resentment as long as they stay alive to do it.

Felix glares at Byleth through narrow eyes. “You don’t know what you’re asking.” 

His resentment burns hottest in Byleth’s sinuses, searing in its irony. Felix has had the rare privilege of unfettered access to silphium since before his first presentation, and he’s taken full advantage. He never even had his initial presentation heat. Naturally, he fought Byleth’s decision the hardest. 

“You’re right,” Byleth says. She summons the Ashen Demon living within her to answer. “I don’t know, and I don’t care. Take the silphium or don’t fight.”

A rustle attracts their attention. Felix’s sword is already drawn. Dimitri stands with his lance ready and ragged fur pelts slung over his shoulder, looking straight through them.

“Your Highness,” Ingrid greets him. Careful, neutral. Lavender soap. Hay and fresh earth. “Was there something you needed?”

Dimitri’s eye glints over Felix’s sword. Molten iron and fresh blood; bitter almond tucked beneath. (Almond blossoms blooming deeper still, according to Sylvain. Byleth has never caught the scent of happiness from Felix.) Sylvain gently lowers Felix’s sword arm, and Felix, surprisingly, permits it. The hostility recedes to a simmer as Sylvain’s body envelops Felix’s.

Then Dimitri turns to her, his gaze so icy that she nearly shivers at the chilling winds blowing about her. She reaches to grip her coat closer, only to recall it still hasn’t turned up after the siege. Feeling oddly naked without its shelter, she steels herself to meet his gaze, to not flinch at the smoke and rot of his misery.

Something else, though, emerges from the carnage hour by hour. Something haunting, caught in rare moments by unpracticed senses. Something lily-fresh, spicy and alluring, with a bitter poisoned edge that brings her back to wild nights in monochrome haze and quiet afternoons sun-drenched and luminous in her memory. 

_Mad honey._

“Dimitri?” Byleth asks. Her voice rises as if from the mountains.

For a moment, she thinks he’s looking at her, really looking, in that fixed, almost hypnotized way he hasn’t in five years. Then he’s turning away again as if he stared too long at the sun. She’s getting better acquainted with that look on other faces as refugees arrive at their gates. _Goddess-touched,_ they whisper. _Divine._ (Clearly none of them actually _met_ Sothis.)

“Hmph,” Dimitri grunts, as if unimpressed by the lot of them. He vanishes into the cathedral.

Byleth wonders, idly, if the column of his throat tastes as good as his mouth. Not that she’d know how his mouth tastes since that never happened.

“Keep me updated,” she says to Felix once her senses clear. She wills herself not to run.

* * *

It takes Byleth two days to catch Sylvain alone. He’s stretched out on a battered couch in the Knights’ Hall, using a telekinesis spell to read one-handed. Even then, he’s not alone in the strictest sense of the word. 

“Shhhh.” Sylvain puts a finger to his lips. He motions downward with his chin. “Baby’s sleeping.”

Byleth glances over the couch. Felix is dead asleep on Sylvain’s chest, snoring lightly and drool pooling on Sylvain’s tunic.

“When did this start up again?” Byleth asks, holding back a smile.

“About twenty minutes after I came clean about my arm,” Sylvain confesses. _Of course._ “Hey, _you_ told me he passed out in the cathedral pew. Look ma, I helped.”

Byleth groans, head in her hands. “What exactly did you tell him, Sylvain?”

“Facts only, no scent, no speculation,” Sylvain says. “I know how not to trip his nose, Professor. If you’d let me handle it the first time, he never would’ve suspected.”

Byleth stares at him. “Handle it like you handled Dimitri?” 

Sylvain floats the book to the side table and yanks at his hair. “Yeah, okay, that went south,” he admits, “but being embraced by an alpha chills Felix out, and honestly, if I hadn’t tried? Ingrid would have. I don’t know what she’s doing with all her alpha mom energy, but she’s still got tons left to burn.”

True. Fair. And yet. “Ingrid is being patient, Sylvain. I know it’s difficult—”

“Do you?” Sylvain’s forest-fire anger rises. “I don't know what your nose is pulling, Professor, but for us? The ones who’ve known His Highness his whole life? His scent feels like hearing the kid we knew constantly scream for someone to _help_ him. You hear that sound, Professor, you’re not supposed to be _patient_. You give the kid a hug.”

That… okay, that hurts, but she gets it. She can feel that explanation like it’s tangible, like it could wrap its hands around her throat and squeeze, like it’s doing that right now.

“So I’m glad it was me,” Sylvain says finally. “Now we know. I don’t know what we know or what to do about what we don’t know, but we know.”

Neither does Byleth. “Fine.” Better they move on than end up in the weeds speculating. “How bad is it with the loyalists?”

“Don’t worry, Professor, I’m not gonna claim His Highness out from under you. I like my omegas feisty, not… grizzly.” Sylvain’s mouth puckers in distaste.

Right. Back at the Academy, Dimitri had been the sort of alpha out of storybooks: a golden prince, distilled knightly ideal. Omegas, commoners, and even other alphas competed for his attention to the point he’d been overwhelmed. Even now, with the missing eye, heavy scars, and overall neglect, Dimitri is physically striking, the contrast of his full mouth and aristocratic bone structure with his powerful, rough-hewn body a devastating combination… or would be, if he were an alpha or a commoner.

He’s not, however, and Fódlan’s nobility prefers their male-bodied omegas with lithe frames and delicate, androgynous features, like Felix and Ashe. So while attractive in the abstract, to the nobility, Dimitri is the wrong _type_ of attractive. They find him ungainly and off-putting, his large frame and heavy scars antithetical to the male-bodied omega ideal, and the reactions vary from Sylvain's relatively polite distaste to far crueler commentary.

(Leonie was right. Nobles are weird.)

Also, thinking about Dimitri’s present appearance isn’t productive for any aspect of this conversation. “Not an alpha, and not what I asked.”

Sylvain only smiles wider. “Sure.” 

Byleth tries not to enable Felix’s sadistic streak, but this would be a great time for him to wake up and bite that shit-eating grin off Sylvain’s face.

Then Sylvain’s smile vanishes. “It’s bad. Cornelia and her lackeys alleged that His Highness killed Rufus to keep him from revealing that he was omega, which would’ve kept him off the throne until he was claimed.”

Byleth cocks her head, confused. “Wasn’t it originally Rufus’s idea to hide he was an omega?”

“It was Rodrigue’s, but Rufus agreed because he’s a lazy prick who wanted to soak the treasury and then retire to chase omega tail full time, and please save your commentary. But it didn’t matter that Rufus was in on it. The cover-up was real, and it fed all those stereotypes about omegas going crazy without a big strong alpha to keep them barefoot and pregnant. Even half the loyalists think His Highness did it; they just wanted Rufus dead too. But if we show up and he smells like the third act of a Mittelfrank tragedy? The vultures, they will descend. He—” Sylvain motions towards Felix, “—won’t say it, but he’s worried about Rodrigue.”

So is Byleth. “What specifically?”

“Not sure. Still trying to sniff that one out, so to speak. Best guess is he’s not as confident as he says that Rodrigue won’t make promises His Highness’s body can’t keep.”

“Over my dead body,” Byleth snarls, magic crackling over her skin. As if being dead would stop her either. No way in hell is she letting _anyone_ put him through that. 

“Yeesh, Professor. Message received. You’re gonna wake the baby with that stink.” Sylvain summons a small gust of wind to blow the air away. Melodramatic ass. Felix mumbles, his face tightening. Sylvain stops to sooth him before continuing. “Doubt anyone would take the risk with His Highness in this state anyway. Appearances aside, he’s got a cloudy eye thing.”

Byleth blinks. “Cloudy eye thing?”

“Yeah, that’s how they describe the omegas who go fer—”

She raises an eyebrow at Sylvain. _Really?_

“Uh, the omegas who snap and kill their alphas because they’re traumatized?”

 _Better…ish._ “Well, their eyes get cloudy. So I’ve heard. Don’t plan on treating my future broodmega badly enough to find out if it’s true. Anyway, I’ll keep working on Felix. He’s been moodier than usual since Dimitri went pre-heat. Might sic Annie on him. He can gnaw on her for a change.”

Byleth snorts. Like Sylvain would let anyone else be Felix’s chew toy. “So how do we play this?”

Sylvain sighs, tugging at his hair. “We need a way to conceal his scent before we meet with Rodrigue and his troops. Annie’s talking to Dr. von Essar about spells that can mask scents and Shamir is embedding some of her people in with the loyalists to read the room. Let’s see how the heat goes.” Another sigh. “Or not. I don’t know. How’s that been working out for us?”

She swallows. “I don’t follow.”

“Just… you ever look back and think doing what we were told was right turned out to be all wrong? How many things might have turned out better if we’d done the stupid, risky stuff we wanted to do instead of following a set of rules that blew up five minutes later?” 

Before Byleth can answer, Sylvain says, “Never mind. Just me being dumb with dumb thoughts about five years ago, Professor.”

Byleth waits. Not hard to see where this is going.

A shadow crosses over Sylvain’s eyes. “Have you heard from her?”

The _other_ omega keeping Byleth up at night. As hard as things are with Dimitri, she can walk down to the cathedral and see he’s still alive. Meanwhile, not one of the coded messages Shamir had smuggled into Enbarr has been answered.

“No.” It hurts to say it aloud. 

“Damn.” The word punches the air from his lungs. Felix stirs, and Sylvain strokes his back. “We didn’t exactly part on the best terms, but… ”

“She’ll turn up, Sylvain,” Byleth says. “She’s a survivor.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain says, “but on whose side?”

Byleth can't answer him.

* * *

Days pass. Byleth finalizes plans with Alois and Catherine to eliminate a mercenary camp flying Dukedom colors nestled at the base of the Oghma Mountains. When she orders Gilbert to accompany the knights on their assignment, he accepts her order with the curdled grace of a man too devoted to duty to give any hint of resentment towards his liege. Byleth toys with sending some of the Lions with their forces, but the pound of her head and constriction of her chest at the thought of her Lions too far from her pulse extinguishes the thought.

When not making preparations, Dimitri kneels as if in prayer before the ruined altar. His scent shift is subtle and intriguing, new notes catching Byleth’s nose. That bouquet rouses from the depths of Byleth’s pre-Academy memories of sun-dappled fruit orchards in Hyrm, honeycombs from Fódlan’s Throat, and pleasure gardens of night-blooming flowers that spark low and sultry in her spine. He has good days, or what passes for good these days: he treats them each with cold indifference and barely mutters under his breath to himself and his ghosts. Byleth allows herself a few days of breathing easier.

Byleth picks out rituals from her and Felix’s shared observations, the great and small ways alphas and omegas make themselves ready to go into full ruts and heats. She dissects his actions with the solemn desperation of a haruspex, and sometimes Byleth thinks she’d do better to seek divine guidance in the entrails of the wild boars their hunters bring back to Garreg Mach, because her supply ran out back the Sealed Forest.

Five years gone and Felix still sleeps on Sylvain’s chest like an ornery house cat while Sylvain asks Byleth about the omega who got away. 

Unfair.

Byleth knows what Sylvain is _really_ asking himself: _what if we’d listened to ourselves instead of our old world rules? What if we’d shown them we loved them instead of hiding behind protocol and social strata? What if we’d done what our instincts demanded we do?_

_What if we‘d hugged the kid?_

She understands because she asks the same question. Would it have saved him? Would he have fallen so low if she had—

—except that never happened, so what did it matter? (But if it had… how was Byleth supposed to know their world was on the verge of total collapse? Even Sothis said some things were fate. How was Byleth supposed to know that ruining his present could have saved him from a far worse future?)

Back then, it was never going to happen between them. He was a prince his omega presentation, and Byleth was a mercenary who wasn’t an alpha. Never mind the vicious stalking thing inside her chest that called (calls) him _hers,_ screamed (screams) that she belongs in that tower, demanded (demands) she _takes what’s hers—_

—and sure, things have changed. Sure, he’s fallen from grace while she’s (technically) risen above kings and emperors. Sure, he wears his omega status like armor while Byleth’s… well, not _not_ an alpha. Sure, there’s always been a darkness in her as well, something that rages at the idea of anyone threatening what belongs to—

—but wanting something does not give Byleth the right to take. Not from a man who worships the dead and scorns the living.

Byleth rolls this over in her head in her spare moments. Her mind is so full of conflicting thoughts that there is little space for more.

Maybe that’s why Byleth misses what _everyone else_ expects her to do about Dimitri’s heat. 

* * *

Ashe, in all his cinnamon-roll sweetness, tips her off first. “I have some special rations I’ve set aside for His Highness’s heat, Professor.”

Byleth, unconcerned, says, “I thought omegas don’t eat solid foods during heats?”

“Of course we don’t, Professor,” Ashe replies. “But what will you eat when you’re sitting with him?”

_What?_

Byleth’s brain stutters to a halt.

“Professor?”

“I think I misheard you, Ashe.” Byleth rubs her ear. “Can you repeat that?”

Ashe repeats it, and it’s no less nonsensical than a few seconds before. Byleth mutters something about a meeting and leaves him cheerfully yelling for her to give him a list of her favorite snacks.

After that, everyone insists on weighing in unprompted.

“Well of course you’re going to sit with him, right Professor?” Annette, ever the optimist as she redraws cellar wards to replace the solid-iron door Dimitri ripped off its hinges. “Being stuck in a room like that is so lonely, especially when your instincts are going haywire. I’d go with you, but I’m not an omega like you and His Highness.”

(“Not an omega,” Byleth mutters through gritted teeth.)

“Not to be crude, Professor, but also yes to be crude, but you ever hear the saying ‘don’t stick your knot in crazy?’ I think it was coined for this moment.” Sylvain, while Mercedes (finally) removes his cast. All that slick charm deployed as if Byleth hadn’t found him sitting in the dark, wishing he’d done everything wrong.

(“Not an alpha,” Byleth reminds him with a deep sigh. Someone really needs to smack that smirk, but fortunately, it appears Felix is on the job.)

“Don’t listen to him, Professor,” Mercedes says, her scent the warm calm of freshly-baked bread even as behind her, Felix lunge-tackles the arm she just finished healing for Sylvain. “Even if you’re not another omega, your presence will be a comfort to Dimitri.”

( _No need to correct her,_ Byleth reminds herself.)

“I know we aren’t supposed to think like this, but after what happened with Sylvain… I’m worried he’ll hurt you.” Ingrid, petting her pegasus absently. “He’s so… large, and since you’re not an alpha, he won’t submit to you during the heat if things go bad.”

(Byleth almost says, “Not _not_ an alpha,” but manages to shut her mouth.)

“There is much unspoken between us, Professor, but if we might put that aside to consider the matter at hand—” Flayn, red-cheeked; solemn and small, “—I have said to you before that you are like the sea, with waters unfathomable and multitudes in which one might drown. I beg you to take this into consideration.” 

(Byleth might have, had Flayn’s comment made any sense.)

“I just want you to know, Professor,” Cyril tells her while they’re reviewing camp assignments for able-bodied refugees, “that thanks to you, five years ago I saw things I can’t unsee, and not even Lady Rhea could make me step one foot into that tower to clean up after you and the prince are done. Is that clear?”

(That’s Byleth’s cue to spend the rest of the day locked in her father’s old office.)

“Why is everyone talking about me sitting Dimitri’s heat?” Byleth asks Manuela late that night over a vintage red she found stashed in the ceiling of Claude’s old room.

Manuela hums dreamily, swirling her wine goblet. “Oh, I don’t know. Could it be the fact he’s a mad omega prince locking himself in a tower and you’re a divinely-blessed alpha—“

“Not an alpha,” Byleth says.

“—alpha beauty who mysteriously disappeared, only to reappear to save him from himself with the power of true love and great sex? The arias practically write themselves.” Manuela sizes up Byleth. “I’m not too old to play you onstage, am I?” 

“You make us sound tawdry.” Byleth wrinkles her nose. “And you said that we shouldn’t call Dimitri mad.”

“Yes, but I’m druuuuunk, and ‘mad’ is so much more poetic than ‘probable severe battle sickness and possible _lunaticus melancholia._ ’ Give a woman a break.” Manuela looks down at her mostly-full wine glass, then picks up the bottle directly and takes a long drink. 

“I still don’t understand why me, specifically.” Once Manuela finishes with the wine, Byleth takes it from her and chugs nearly half the rest.

Manuela wipes her mouth. “Well, after you and Dorothea—”

Byleth finishes the bottle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Attributions:
> 
>   * [Mad honey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayanotoxin#Mad_honey_intoxication) is real. It’s the byproduct of bees who primarily feed from nectar off rhododendron flowers. It’s a hallucinogen in small doses, but larger doses will kill you.
>   * [Bitter almonds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond#Sweet_and_bitter_almonds) contain higher concentrations of hydrogen cyanide and will also kill you unless processed first. Almond blossoms have a honey-like scent.
>   * The class cinnamon roll is and remains a [cinnamon roll](http://www.thevanillabeanblog.com/2019/12/cinnamon-rolls.html).
>   * [Nine men's morris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_men%27s_morris) is an ancient two-player strategy board game that has been "solved," i.e. if both players play perfect games, the game always ends in a draw.
>   * 'Battle sickness' is an early term for PTSD. Since there is little in Medieval medical literature that clearly matches a schizophrenia differential, I went with the two Latin terms that would best combine to describe Dimitri's symptoms.
>   * While it is a natural outgrowth of my world building, I originally saw the concept of demonic beasts emitting pheromones in [xxystos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxystos/pseuds/xxystos)’s fic [Embers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21090254/), so credit goes to them. Demonic beasts in this universe emit both alpha and omega pheromones.
> 

> 
> Worldbuilding Notes:
> 
>   * For anyone wondering about mpreg: short answer is no mpreg in this universe, long answer is “yes, but you need a crest, and you’ll probably die.” So people talk about it, but it's very much off the table for this universe. Male omegas can still make babies the old-fashioned way.
>   * The term 'beta' doesn't really exist in-universe. Why? Because they’re the status quo.
>   * ‘Going to ground’ is when omegas close to their heat barricade themselves in with their nest and heat supplies. It’s sometimes used for alphas as well, although their presentation cycle differs significantly from omegas.
>   * To ‘sit’ a heat is to stay with the omega for social/emotional support. To ‘share’ a heat is to be an alpha who knots an omega during said heat. Nobles are less likely to distinguish between the two terms.
>   * Omega inheritance law in Fódlan is a _mess,_ but the TL;DR is that omega inheritance is held in trust by the closest alpha relative or the nation’s sovereign until an acceptable alpha is selected and successfully claims the omega.
>   * It’s functionally impossible for an alpha to kill an omega they have claimed. The reverse is not true. No court in Fódlan would charge an omega with killing their claimed alpha.
>   * CMV: Sylvain smells like Axe body spray centuries before its creation.
> 

> 
> Please keep your comments, questions, and other feedback coming! It's been great hearing so many of you are on board.


	4. four (-2 days)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What good had _nothing_ done any of them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings. Some fairly classist/ableist language because Felix.
> 
> While writing this story, I assumed readers would be familiar with omegaverse tropes because omegaverse is a divisive concept. I am hearing that there are folks out there reading this who are unfamiliar with the omegaverse, which legitimately shocks me, because again, omegaverse is A CHOICE. It is very flattering and I thank you all for that. To help you out, [here is the fanlore entry on omegaverse](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Alpha/Beta/Omega) and [here is my favorite primer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/403644/chapters/665489). The Fanlore entry is the most balanced, but the primer recognizes this trope is _completely absurd,_ something with which your author agrees.
> 
> Also [this happened](https://youtu.be/wfuAt-tbyAg) as a result of the last chapter and honestly, having y’all meme my fic feels like Author Goals.  
> 

**GARLAND MOON 1180**

It was a day with sunshine sharp as Catherine's blade, Thunderbrand cutting through magical miasma. When the haze cleared, the skies were blue and the enemy pointed woodcutter’s axes and pitchforks at the goddess. Byleth hoped their goddess got the message, because their Archbishop didn’t.

They stopped at an inn that night at Catherine’s insistence. After chasing her students out of the tavern and into their rooms, Byleth went searching for Ashe. She found him staring dully over a fishing hole in the weak moonlight, scraggly trees reaching up to the sky like the hands of the dying. "Are your brother and sister safe?”

“Yes.” Ashe kept his eyes down. “I had to tell them.” Words raw and scraped off his throat.

Byleth did not kill Lonato Gaspard. She meant to, because it was just another job for her, and she could make it so quick and clean that Lonato would barely notice. It was clear Dimitri had also steeled himself to deliver the killing blow.

In the end, Lonato died with an arrow in his throat, choking on his own blood, and Byleth reminded herself she picked the Lions to harden their hearts enough to survive this cruel world. She thought that was what she was best suited to do.

Ashen Demon. Heartless, scentless.

_And yet._

Ashe’s eyes should not be that empty.

She picked up a few of the flat stones along the pond bed and skipped one across the pond. Four skips. Losing her touch.

“What His Highness said to you today,” Ashe began, clutching his arms around himself, “about whether Lonato’s cause was just. Do you believe that?”

She fiddled with the stone. “Why does that matter?”

“Why does that—why does that matter?” Ashe’s head pivoted as if on a swivel, his face dropped in disbelief. “He saved my life! He saved my brother and sister! He took us in, fed us, clothed us, educated us… how could he be so kind, so loving towards us, and then take up arms against the goddess?”

“So what? You’re not allowed to love him anymore?”

“I—” Based on Ashe’s reaction, that was precisely what he thought. Lonato was his dad; of course Ashe still loved him. Wild anyone made him think he couldn’t. “If his cause was unjust and he sent those peasants to die…”

“He still saved you.” She skipped the next stone. Five skips. Better, but not much. “The worthiness of his cause doesn’t change the fact he loved you, and the fact he loved you doesn’t make his cause more or less worthy.”

Ashe was quiet. Byleth skipped another stone (seven skips), but turned to look when she heard a noise. Tears rolled down Ashe’s cheeks as he struggled to hold himself together.

“He was ready to k-kill me,” Ashe sobbed, wheezing through each tortured breath. “If he loved me—why would he—why didn’t he love—”

Well, shit. Now what?

She stared out at the pond as if the carp could tell her what to do, and Sothis stood on the water where her last stone had fallen, glaring at Byleth. “For goodness’s sake, you dolt, hug the poor boy!”

Fair enough. Byleth pulled Ashe into her arms. It was awkward at first, but Ashe settled into her neck and he sobbed, long and loud, for what felt like hours. To pass the time, Byleth rubbed circles in his back and hummed an old tavern ballad. It sounded soothing, if you didn’t know the lyrics were about a threesome gone wrong.

When Ashe finally came back to himself, Byleth said the only thing that came to mind. “That was fucked up.” Byleth scowled. “It was fucked up Lonato didn’t tell you the truth so you could make your own choice, and it was fucked up that the Archbishop sent you to kill him. I’m sorry. You deserved better.”

Ashe actually laughed a little through the last of his tears. “I… thanks?” He picked up one of her skipping stones. Twelve skips. Nice. “It… it wasn’t just that he took me in, Professor.”

“Oh?” Another stone throw. (Nine skips. Damn.)

“I was pre-heat when Lonato adopted me.”

“You’re an omega?” Byleth asked. She vaguely remembered something about that on the class roster.

He grinned, uneasy. “I’m lucky because my scent isn't too strong. I can suppress them almost completely if I concentrate. But living in the city… it was only a matter of time before I caught the wrong people’s attention. You understand, right?”

Byleth nodded, swallowing her bile. She understood just fine. While Byleth erred on the side of preserving life, those types were her exception to the rule. “Look, even if Lonato’s cause wasn’t just,” Byleth told Ashe, “he saved you and your siblings. You get to love him and miss him, and you get to be angry that he did that fucked up thing to you. You get to be all of them.”

“Thanks, Professor,” Ashe said, his tiny smile more genuine this time. Then he sniffs the air and pauses. “Huh, that’s weird.”

“Hmmm?” One last throw. Ten skips. Just not her night.

“Just… I’ve never noticed before, Professor, but you do have a scent. It’s faint, but… it reminds me of… huh. It’s… nice.”

They stayed a while longer skipping stones, and when they turned back to the inn, Byleth’s eye caught what appeared to be a splotch of blue fabric in a bush.

When she looked again, it was gone.

Huh.

* * *

“Hey, Mercie?”

“Yes, Annie?”

“This is going to sound really weird, so please don’t judge me, okay?”

“I’d never judge you for anything you tell me, Annie.” Mercedes put her hand over Annette’s.

“Okay, um… have you noticed that the professor has a scent lately? And it’s so good, you know?” Annette hid her face behind a book. Byleth paused at the top of the library steps, curious to hear more.

Mercedes leaned in with a wide smile and blushing cheeks. “Oh Annie, I’ve been thinking the same thing! She has the nicest scent. It reminds me so much of beeswax candles and sweet incense during high mass at the Itha cathedral when Mother and I first came to Faerghus.”

“Uh… what?” Annette cocked her head sideways at Mercedes. “That’s not what she smells like at all! She smells like your candied peach currant tarts.”

“Oh.” Mercedes rested her chin in her hands. “That’s, um, very different. Huh.”

“Huh,” Annette agreed, and Byleth decided she needed several more books.

* * *

_“_ I mean, if I had to put a name to it, I’d say she smelled like steak.” Ingrid motioned as she spoke, nearly whacking Sylvain with a pheasant leg. “But a good steak, one of those marbles Duscur bear bone-in cuts grilled in butter and onions like our old cook used to—”

“We get it, you’re a glutton,” Felix muttered.

From her table, Byleth kept chewing at a steady pace, so no one would think she was listening, even though her appetite died somewhere around ‘bone-in cuts’.

“I agree with Ingrid, the professor smells delicious,” Sylvain said. “Just like a nice, wet pu—ow, FUCK, Felix!”

“Language, Sylvain,” Dimitri said automatically.

“You should thank me, Sylvain.” Felix was sweet as sugar hemlock. “You did not want to finish that sentence.”

Byleth thanked Felix from the bottom of her empty chest that Sylvain did not finish that sentence.

* * *

“All right, Felix,” Sylvain said, lying across the desk they shared, “what do you think the professor smells like?”

Dimitri had buried his head in his arms. “Must we start this again?”

“Alas, but we must, Your Highness,” Sylvain said, patting Dimitri on the back awkwardly. “It’s for science. So, Felix, want to answer my question now?”

Felix turned his chair backward, and Byleth hid in a bush so he wouldn’t spot her. “I don’t care what she smells like as long as we get to spar.”

“So she smells like the training yard, check.”

“I didn’t say that, asshole!”

“Language, Felix!” Sylvain nudged Dimitri. “Are you just going to let him get away with using such foul and shocking obscenities, Your Highness?”

Dimitri buried his head deeper into his arms. “The professor deserves our respect. Speculation about her scent is not a topic we should be endlessly visiting.”

“Message received.” Sylvain grinned. “His Highness hates science.”

Dimitri’s head popped up from the desk. “I do not hate science, Sylvain! I simply do not see the correlation with this nonsense and science!”

“Don’t be so hard on His Highness, Sylvain,” Ashe said. A beat. “The kitchens at my dad’s tavern back in Gaspard.”

Dimitri’s head dropped back into his arms. “Must you betray me as well, Ashe?”

“S-s-sorry, Your Highness!”

“Why thank you, Ashe, for supporting the cause of science! What about you, Dedue?”

“I am from Duscur,” Dedue reminded them. “My people do not dedicate hours to analyzing the scents of others. We have other ways to occupy our time.”

No response. Someone better call Manuela because Dedue just burned the whole class. Byleth held her hand to her mouth to keep from cackling.

“Okay, but I don’t think Dedue counts,” Annette finally said. “No offense, Dedue, we still love you! But… science!”

“None taken, Annette.” Dedue nodded at her.

“Wait, why doesn’t Dedue count?” Dimitri pleaded. “Can’t we please let Dedue count?”

“No, Annie’s right, Dimitri,” Mercedes said with an apologetic smile. “We love Dedue very much, but this is for science.”

Felix jumped out of his seat. “Who the fuck cares what she smells like?”

“Everybody!” the rest of the class yelled in unison. Sylvain tacked on “Language!” after.

“Say the people who think the professor smells like dinner!”

“Says the person who thinks the professor smells like a training yard!” Ingrid bit back.

“I didn’t say that!” A beat. “She smells like Zoltan steel in a training yard.”

“HA! Nailed it!” Sylvain pointed wildly at Felix while holding out a fist for someone to bump. After a moment, Dedue bumped back.

Felix pushed Sylvain off the desk, which was when Byleth finally ended this nonsense.

* * *

Okay. So. The scent thing was strange.

Byleth was scentless. She was used to that. It creeped people out when she was younger, but later it made her mysterious and interesting to alpha and omega bedmates. Many said the lack of scent made them feel calm, like they could control their desires, enjoy themselves without the inherent compromise of their judgment that came with navigating scents and the magics entwined with them.

Now? Byleth had no idea, and the Blue Lions were weirdly consumed by the question.

(Well, except Dimitri. He never once commented on her scent, and when the topic came up he demanded they change the subject, which they never did. Did he not like her new scent?)

Still, her students obsessed over many things that made no sense to Byleth. Maybe this was a Faerghus thing?

* * *

Okay. So. Judging by the disturbingly passionate argument between Lorenz and Ferdinand over whether Byleth smelled more like bergamot or Almyran pine needle tea, this was not a Faerghus thing. It was like watching a very fancy carriage wreck, seeing them argue so… ritualistically. Unsettling to watch, yet too bizarre to look away. Gloves were thrown. In faces.

Hubert, of all people, broke up the fight, calling them both idiots arguing over pointless nonsense. Byleth was about to stop and thank him when he added, “How can you imbeciles mistake the smell of freshly-brewed black coffee for tea? Really, Ferdinand, your nose is an embarrassment.”

Byleth gently smacked her forehead as all three began squabbling.

“Fools,” Lysithea muttered in a corner. “She smells like a nirvana cake in a library stack. I don’t know what’s wrong with everyone’s noses around here.”

“Hey, are all these descriptions of the professor’s scent making you hungry too?” Raphael asked Leonie.

“Nobles are the worst,” Leonie muttered, pushing her plate away in disgust.

* * *

She was listening to Claude (“tasty”) try to get Edelgard (“it is none of your business, Claude, and if you keep asking I will make you smell like a dead body”) to tell him what she thought Byleth smelled like when Dorothea sat down next to her. “He’s still at it with Edie?”

Byleth looked over at Dorothea. She was, in one sense, the least curious of the students at the academy. Byleth knew her kind of omega, unlike the strange, stuffy noble-creatures she met here at Garreg Mach. Normally Byleth would have dismissed her for that alone, but here at Garreg Mach, where nothing made sense, familiarity bred affection. “Why is my scent so interesting to everyone?”

“You don’t know?” Dorothea’s brows rose to her forehead. “First you had no scent, now you do, but everyone thinks it’s completely different. Sure alphas and omegas scents change with their moods, but the baseline scent is the same. Earthy, musky alphas; flowery, fruity omegas… and definitely not the curtains of Mittelfrank’s opera house stage.”

Byleth groaned. “Not you too.”

“Yes, me too.” Dorothea laughed and patted her head. “You are quite the mystery, Professor!”

* * *

“If I might offer an observation,” Sothis began later that evening, “the alpha students speak as if they wish to devour you, but the omegas… they describe your scent as they associate with places, but I cannot draw any other common thread between them.”

Byleth put her pillow over her head and screamed. Couldn’t Sothis go back to judging Byleth’s sex life? Sothis didn’t even have a nose! Byleth should have been safe from—

_—ohhhhhhh._

“Safety,” Byleth said once she removed the pillow from her face. “The scents are from places where they felt safest.”

Sothis smiled and clapped her hands. “Yes! Of course! That is surprisingly clever of you!”

As was her practice, Byleth ignored Sothis’s backhanded compliment and let her mind wander. Where would Dimitri feel safe? Did her scent remind him of that place?

Byleth dismissed the thought with a shake of her head. Dimitri was an alpha (was he?); all of the house leaders were. He’d want to eat her like the rest, if her scent even pleased him.

* * *

Still, Byleth did learn, some weeks later, what Dimitri thought of her scent.

She had left her coat in the classroom. Byleth hurried back, steps slowing as she approached. She heard the sound of moving desks and stacked supplies. Dimitri hadn’t yet finished cleaning up from the day’s lecture. The sounds stopped entirely as she reached the threshold.

When she spotted him through the classroom door, Dimitri had her coat in his hands, his nose practically buried in the fabric. She’d never seen such a peaceful look on his face.

“Oh my,” Sothis remarked, her eyebrows almost touching her hairline. “He seems to like your scent just fine.”

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

By the time Felix corners her in the training yard, Byleth is nearly ready to flip a coin. She decides to flip Felix instead.

“We need to talk,” he snarls at her. Molten iron and blood, not even bitter almond today.

Byleth tosses Felix a dull sword, which he catches with ease. His eyes and mouth compress into thin, hard lines. Felix comes at her swinging before Byleth picks up her training sword. That’s fine. She slides under his swing and elbows his ankle. That sets him off balance just long enough for her to grab a sword and parry his next swing. Rolling backward, she leaps to her feet. A few more swings and parries and Byleth sees her opening. He’s lost control over his own momentum, so Byleth can feint left and score a point on his right side.

“Nice try,” Byleth says. He’s stopped fighting fair. Good.

“Fuck you,” Felix spits back. “Are you staying with the boar or not?”

Byleth doesn’t answer, waiting for Felix to attack again. This time it’s cut cut cut, Byleth defending as he throws himself at her over and over. She glances back at the training yard walls and defends against flurries of cut cut cut before she ducks low and jabs the sensitive band in his left thigh. His pause is enough for Byleth to step to the side and score another hit.

“Answer my question,” Felix snarls, but he’s already attacking again.

Time to finish this.

Byleth goes on the offensive with a series of swift cuts, barely flicking her wrist to keep him parrying. Felix has to take one step back, then another. He goes left at the third step. Byleth is already there with a sharp thrust. Felix barely dodges the thrust and comes back strong with a heavy shoulder slash, which buys Byleth just enough time to kick him in the balls. Gently…ish. He might decide to use those someday.

Groaning, Felix drops to the training grounds, curled up in a ball. “What the fuck, Professor?”

“Were we not fighting dirty?” Byleth asks, concealing her smile.

Felix grumbles. “Ugh. No, we were.” Felix groans and flops on the ground. “You’re going up there, right?”

_What._

“Right?”

Felix “Dimitri is a beast craving blood” Hugo Fraldarius _wants_ her to heat sit with Dimitri?

“ _Right?_ ”

As Byleth’s brain restarts, she schools herself blandly as possible. “I want to be sure we are on the same page,” Byleth begins. “You Felix, want me, Byleth, to heat sit Dimitri, a man you have called ‘boar prince,’ ‘beast craving blood,’ ‘walking corpse’—”

“That last one’s the boar’s name for itself, not mine,” Felix protested, shockingly indignant.

“—’bloodthirsty animal’, ‘mindless brute’, violent savage’—”

“Yeah, you’ve made your point.”

“—’disgusting monster’, ‘homicidal maniac’—”

“I am _aware_ this is off-brand for me,” Felix yells at her, “and _no one_ is angrier about it than I am!”

Byleth should probably stop it there, but someone has to throw Felix a decent argument before he explodes all over the place, and better the training yard than a real battlefield. Plus her brain’s exploding right now too _._ “He’s also made it clear that he’ll kill me if he thinks I’m interfering with his vengeance.”

Not in so many words, and Byleth is not entirely sure what would classify as ‘interference,’ but the implication has been made on four separate occasions. (Not that she’s counting.)

Felix scoffs. “Please. He’d cut his own throat before he tried to kill _you_.”

Well, that’s unfortunate, because Dimitri actively trying to kill her might be a nice change. She prefers Dimitri fury-sick with rage pointing at her as one might point the tip of a lance. Otherwise he’s not looking at Byleth, he’s looking at whatever divinity looks like in his mind, or worse, jabbering at ghosts. “Why is he my responsibility, Felix?”

“For fuck’s sake.” Felix spits at the ground, never breaking his hateful glare. “You’re going to abandon him now?”

Byleth wills herself to breathe more slowly. “That’s not an answer.”

“You can’t just let that animal roll around in his filth for days!”

“Is that what you think will happen?” Byleth asks.

Something about the way Felix shifts his weight makes Byleth suspicious. Finally, he says, “I’m not sure.”

“Perhaps you should offer, then?” Byleth suggests, squashing the part of her brain that rages at the thought of anyone but her up in that tower. “You’re an omega and the real Shield.”

“I can’t look at that rotting carcass for days, that’s why!”

‘Rotting carcass,’ that’s the one Byleth forgot. It’s hard to keep track of all of Felix’s go-to insults for Dimitri.

Also, he’s a damn liar. Felix stalks Dimitri almost everywhere, and Byleth caught that whiff of sweetness when she called him the real Shield of Faerghus. “Why are you being difficult? You’re usually happy to throw yourself into fixing whatever stupid mess the boar’s made this week, so why is this different?”

 _Because you don’t let a fox guard the rabbit hutch, and I’m not a fox, but I’m not_ not _a fox._

She holds out a hand to Felix instead. “Nobody will tell why _I_ have to do it, Felix,” Byleth says. “Tell me why.”

Groaning, Felix accepts her hand and allows Byleth to pull him back to a standing position. For once, his gaze is thoughtful, rather than accusing. “Because you sat with Dorothea.”

 _There_ it is.

Five years gone and Dorothea still sticks in the Lions’ craws. Like she and Byleth eloped in the middle of the school year instead of Byleth sitting _one_ heat with her. Sure, they’d broken school protocol and Byleth had almost been fired, but…

“Dorothea was different.” Some of Byleth’s inner tension seeps from her skin, and based on how Felix’s nose wrinkles, he picks up the scent. “You know that.”

“Exactly.” Felix's tone is bland enough to make Byleth wary. “She was feral. Like the boar.”

The rank hypocrisy of Felix calling any omega 'feral' aside, he knows better. “Don’t call her that. She was an omega raised on the streets, which is _different,_ not ‘feral _._ ’ She had needs that the monastery couldn’t accommodate.”

“The boar was suppressed until Cornelia arrested him, so all his heats took place in the wilds,” Felix reminds Byleth. Rot and ozone flicker in his scent. “Sounds an awful lot like Dorothea to me.”

 _You should be praying that they’re not too alike._ “It’s still different.”

“You keep saying that,” Felix says, “but you never explain why.”

Byleth chokes back the mad cackle desperate to escape her throat, because who is she to explain to Felix how magic and belief can reshape his very soul, and who is Felix to think he can understand how it shaped Dorothea? Byleth has no idea what practical experience Felix has with being an omega, but whatever that experience, it’s a noble’s experience, same as Mercedes and even Ashe, nick of time though that was. He’s never been alone in the Enbarr slums, far too young and targeted by cruel alpha nobles looking for diversion… or worse.

He’s had little exposure to the differences between how the nobility handled their presentation cycles and how people on the streets managed. Heat and rut are lonely experiences for the nobility; they lock themselves in their estates’ presentation chambers, isolated from the rest of the household until the storm passes, and Garreg Mach was no different. The rooms were well-appointed, even luxurious, but human contact was minimized to the occasional tending by trusted beta servants. It has no resemblance to how street omegas survive.

“It just is,” Byleth says, because there’s no point arguing with Felix about things he doesn’t care to understand.

Felix scrubs his face with his palms, huffing at her. “Fine,” he says, tired. “Here’s where I’m at. I’ve spent the past week watching that damn boar haul water, cut bedstraw, drag wool bolts and fur pelts from fuck-knows-where, and who the fuck all knows what else I missed. I had no idea it was like that. If I got dropped somewhere without silphium on me… ”

_One wine barrel, Hyrm Burgundy third press._

_He took so little._

“…I wouldn’t know what to do,” Felix admits. “But he does.”

It’s honestly hard to process what she’s hearing. Felix has practically fashioned his identity around his opposition to Dimitri, wears the sort of fortress-thick armor crafted to encase raw, brittle things. It’s not the contradiction that surprises Byleth, but the nuance. She decides to be kinder in her response than usual in turn. “I’m sure your instincts would kick in—”

He puts up his hands. “Stop. I can already smell you bullshiting me.”

Felix sighs again. “He’s still a beast craving blood,” he adds with a sharp scowl, “but he survived five years of heats on his own, and if he’s anything like Dorothea, then you should keep the promise you made to him.”

_What?_

“My promise?” She made a promise? Sure, she’d asked him to help her when he caught her and Dorothea stealing the wine barrel, but a promise…?

Felix frowns at her. “You really don’t remember what you said to the boar?”

“How would you even know if I said anything to him?” Byleth asks.

“Uh, because the boar couldn’t shut up about it for four days like he was some sniveling maiden instead of the rampaging animal that attacked anyone that went near her door?” Felix boggles at her, as if this were completely obvious.

“And how would _I_ know that since all of _you_ swore never to speak of what happened?” Byleth counters, because it was _not_ obvious, as she’d been locked behind a door with Dorothea. Most of Byleth’s account of those four days came from Seteth screaming at both her and Dorothea after the heat ended, and watching her students walk around for the next few days with what appeared to be the world’s worst collective hangover.

“Oh for fuck’s— _you said you’d do the same for him!"_

_What. What._

That can’t be right. She’d never make such a careless promise. Right?

Byleth racks her mind for anything she might have tossed off that could be interpreted as a promise. It had been such an intense night, their slapdash plan threatening to fall apart when Dimitri spotted them stealing the wine barrel—

 _Do you know how much you risk doing this? If they sent you away from here, I could not_ — _our class would_ —

_Let me handle that, okay? Right now, help me protect her._

_Professor_ —

_If you needed me, Dima, I would do no less for you._

—oh dear, she did say that.

“Oh shit, I did say that.”

Felix must have seen or smelled the moment she remembered, because he’s got a faint smirk playing over his lips. “Yeah, you did.”

Yeah, she did. “Fine,” Byleth says, swallowing, “but I didn’t know he was an omega when I said it.”

“Liar.” Felix’s voice is quiet and stiletto-sharp. “Please. I’m insulted you’d even try. You can be pretty oblivious, Professor, but not even you would tell a wolf to guard chickens.”

_Says the guy asking the not-not-a-fox to guard a rabbit._

He’s right, though. Even back then, Byleth knew _something_ was off about Dimitri. As careless as her promise was, Byleth cannot in good conscience say she was unaware there might be greater implications at work than they’d admitted at the time.

Okay.

Fine.

She made the promise five years ago, and she knew there was more going on under the hood. All of that aside, the present Dimitri wants little to do with Byleth when she’s not actively killing Imperial soldiers. “You seem sure he remembers.”

“Am I sure the guy promising my imaginary dead brother Edelgard’s head remembers your dumb promise? Surprisingly, yes.”

 _Would you_ protect _me if I needed you?_

_Fortunately for you, Professor, monsters do not require protecting._

Okay. That’s not even her faulty memory. She’s just in denial. But…

“You said you would do what you could to help him,” Felix says, somber now. “ _If_ —emphasis on the _if_ —Dimitri is still somewhere in there, Professor, then he remembers your dumb promise, and he’s expecting you not to keep it.”

“ _Not_ keep my promise?” Byleth asks, quiet. That’s… sad. If she had a heart, it might hurt.

“Yeah.” Felix scrubs his face, exhausted. “So if you go up there and blow up whatever self-loathing garbage he’s cooked up this week, and maybe— _maybe_ —we knock something loose.”

It sounds… it sounds _good._ It sounds like Sylvain asking her if the wrong things might have been right after all. It sounds like finally doing _something_ instead of more of the _nothing_ they did as Dimitri slid into madness. What good had _nothing_ done any of them?

“Fine,” Byleth says to Felix. “I’ll ask. But if he says no, I leave him be.”

Felix shrugs, laconic, but Byleth catches the almond blossom anyway. “Good enough.”

Good enough. Byleth will keep her promise.

Good enough. This is the right thing to do.

( _Good enough,_ the dark stalking thing inside her whispers. _Whatever puts you where you belong._ )

* * *

Byleth spends three hours in her office, pacing as she composes her words, before she heads back to the cathedral to talk to Dimitri. Naturally, he isn’t there.

Marianne is there instead, near-prostrate in her devotions, counting prayer beads with the frenzy of a battle mantra. When she smells Byleth coming, however, she stands up and smiles softly.

Marianne rode up to the monastery on Dorte a week after the Blue Lions’ reunion, barely a day ahead of the blizzard that trapped them for most of the winter. She sleeps better now, her eyes brighter and softer than five years ago. Her scent is lighter, amber and earth after a fresh spring rain.

“Marianne.” Byleth mirrors Marianne's soft smile. “Have you seen Dimitri?”

“I… I saw him going towards the Goddess Tower,” Marianne answers, glancing out the side doors. “I think he’s going to ground, and I didn’t wish to upset him. I’m sorry, Professor.”

“It’s all right. Not your fault.” As soon as she saw Marianne, Byleth guessed that was the case. Since Byleth closed the cathedral to non-essential personnel, Marianne uses the side chapel like everyone else for worship services. While Marianne is technically still allowed in the cathedral at any time, she only prays here when she expects Dimitri to be gone for a few days. Byleth can’t bring herself to ask Marianne what she caught with her sensitive nose that keeps her away.

Still, Dimitri having gone to ground complicates approaching him. Now she’ll have to walk into his nest, which might come across as threatening. If by some miracle he accepts, however, she’d have to be prepared to stay the full heat, which meant having all her supplies packed and ready. Byleth has long grown numb to Dimitri rejecting her here in the cathedral. Dimitri rejecting her in the tower, after she poured time and energy into the chance he’d let her stay, would be… harder.

She turns to Marianne. “May I ask you a question?”

Marianne twists her beads in her hands. “I don’t know if I’ll have a good answer.”

“I don’t want a good answer,” Byleth tells her. “I want your answer.”

Marianne considers this for a moment before nodding. “Okay. I can do that.”

Byleth takes a deep breath. “You remember how after Dorothea, I was permitted to visit students in presentation for an hour each day, right?” Marianne nods. “When I offered to visit you during your rut, and you said no, do you wish I had sat with you anyway?”

Marianne’s mouth drops open. She looks towards the tower as her fingers twist over her prayer beads. “I… no, not really. It was for your safety. My ruts are dangerous, even in the heat chamber with restraints.”

“I see.” Byleth waits. Marianne deserves her patience.

After a moment, Marianne’s face smooths, her eyes clear and steady. Her hand drifts over a spot on her arm. “But… you and Dimitri insisted from the start that I was worth your time, Professor,” Marianne continues, voice growing stronger, “and because of that, I started to believe it too, and I learned that others in my class felt the same way. I appreciated how the Blue Lions cooked my favorite meals for me during my rut. Everything was delicious, and I felt… remembered, even though ruts are so lonely.”

“Ashe did most of the cooking,” Byleth says. “He was happy to do it.”

“Ashe? Really?” Marianne’s face flushes a soft pink. “I never thanked him.”

“You should,” Byleth tells her, offering her a small, sad grin. “He still compares himself to Dedue.”

“I will. I’m glad you told me.” Marianne’s smile was brighter than the candles lit among the cathedral ruins. “I… I admit I was sad that Dimitri never offered to rut-sit with me. I wouldn’t have said yes, and I know now why he didn’t, but… ”

“But?” Byleth clenches her fist to smooth the flicker of rage within her, as if Marianne just threatened to steal something that belonged to Byleth. It's such an irrational impulse that it takes Byleth aback; she's talking about _Marianne_ here, after all, who has forced herself small and quiet to combat the large, vicious thing that refuses to be suppressed within her own chest. 

Marianne glances wide-eyed at Byleth, startled, and Byleth has the uncomfortable sense she let the secret slip from her pores. She catches a note of amber, warmer and sweeter than Marianne’s usual earthy musk. As if recognizing Byleth’s dominance. “Just… thinking. It’s nice to know people care.” She grips her forearm right where, if Byleth recalls correctly, Hilda had finally bitten her.

Byleth sighs. She has to get a hold of herself. She's not even an alpha, after all, though in moments like this she feels a flare of empathy for what Marianne and the other alphas go through each day, beating back the monsters within themselves. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s all right, Professor.” Marianne smiles again, even if it’s strained. “I smelled him at Dorothea’s door. And… I believe no matter what Dimitri says, deep down he’ll be happy to know you care. That means something.”

She smiles back at Marianne. “Thank you.”

Byleth turns away, willing herself calm. She has preparations to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: ~~a fuckload more flashbacks~~ the goddess tower, redux.
> 
> And can I just say I wrote that Byleth/Ashe convo before Cindered Shadows dropped and made it even more on point? *tosses hair*


	5. five (ground day)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We aren’t animals because animals are normal, and _we aren’t normal._ "
> 
> OR
> 
> "Five years ago, I made you a promise. I’m here to keep it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings.** This chapter is one of the “heavies” of the story and the flashback sections contain non-graphic discussion of human trafficking, including child sex trafficking, and past physical abuse against children by their parents. Also a lot of dehumanizing language and classism. Please take care of yourselves.
> 
> Thank you again to all the wonderful folks who have left their comments and kudos on this fic. It’s been great hearing your thoughts and perspectives on the story so far!

**VERDANT RAIN MOON 1180**

Byleth was mid-lesson plan when someone knocked on her door. “It’s open.”

Dorothea Arnault stepped inside, perpetually in bloom, ever as fresh as the first rose of spring. There was something different about her tonight. She was shifty, sharper-edged. More thorn than rose.

She rocked back on her heels. “Hello, Professor. I heard the Blue Lions are chasing down a bandit group that stole a hero’s relic.”

Ashen Demon or not, heartless or not, Byleth was proud that her face didn’t even twitch. There was no use expelling her unexpected rage at Rhea choosing her house to cut down one of her students’ family members— _again_ —towards another innocent student. “What of it?”

“Well… ” Dorothea folded her hands primly. Her nerves were frayed. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to join your house’s mission tomorrow. Lady Rhea assigned the Eagles to escort some stuffy noble pilgrims to a holy site, but this sounds much more exciting.”

Lie. The simplest explanation would be Dorothea was husband hunting, probably either Dimitri or Sylvain. Byleth shied from the simplest explanation, however, because something in Dorothea’s usual glamorous facade had cracked; her shoulders were squared, and her wide stance matched the hard glint in her eye. It was a performance, yes, but it felt more honest than usual. Here, now, Byleth was being permitted to glimpse the calluses that had formed within Dorothea’s soul.

Easy explanations would not suffice. Still, Dorothea would be an asset to the mission in more than one sense, if Byleth was reading her right. “I’ll make the arrangements…”

Byleth paused, waited as Dorothea leaned closer. Two could play at performing for the crowd. “...if you tell me the real reason why you want to come with us.”

Impressive, fascinating, how quickly Dorothea’s face shifted from girlish charm to pure venom. “I’d be delighted.”

* * *

Okay. As reasons went, Dorothea’s were good. Damn good.

Byleth told her to meet her in her quarters before the lauds bell. Dorothea arrived much earlier than that, pack in hand, her sharp knock waking Byleth. She was gracious, waiting outside while Byleth fumbled through her morning ablutions and tossed her gear in her pack.

Dorothea’s pack was lighter than Byleth would expect for a diva. “No one else is up yet?”

“No. I wanted to meet you before they arrived.” Her Lions, especially their fearless leader, showed up early for everything. Bane of Byleth’s existence, that. “They’re going to ask you why you came. When they do, you’ll tell them. Don’t sugarcoat it.”

Dorothea laughed daintily and tossed her long locks, giving Byleth a teasing wink. The first rose of spring, beautiful and cruel, silken petals and stems thick with thorns. “No need to worry, Professor. I never miss my cue.”

* * *

Dorothea tied second with Ashe in the Least Likely to Complain About Rain rankings, behind Dedue but ahead of Dimitri. She wasn’t steady on a mount, so Sylvain, sensing an opportunity, invited her to ride with him. Her manner was ladylike, demure even while clinging to Sylvain, quiet amidst the Lions’ bright daytime chatter.

The rain broke as they made camp for the evening, Byleth refusing to push farther on dark, rain-slicked roads. Annette started two small fires while Dimitri and Dedue set up tents for the evening. Mercedes aired out the bedrolls. Ashe broke out their rations, along with some berries he and Annette picked when they stopped earlier. Felix inspected their weapons while Ingrid and Sylvain brushed down the mounts. Sir Gilbert volunteered for the first watch at the edge of the camp. Dorothea, out of sync with their routines, sat daintily on one of the fallen trees Dimitri dragged over to use as benches.

It was Felix who asked. (Predictable.) “Why are you here?”

Dorothea pointed to herself in mock surprise, her eyes shining with amusement. “You’re referring to me, I assume?”

“Students from other classes have joined us before, Felix,” Ingrid reminded him in a terse voice. She stepped closer to Dorothea.

Felix sneered at them both. “A battlefield isn’t the place to go husband-hunting.”

“Don’t let Felix bother you, Dorothea,” Sylvain said with a sly wink. “You’re welcome to join me on the battlefield anytime.”

Dimitri was about to intervene when Dorothea’s face shifted. Her diva’s mask shattered, leaving someone far colder, harder in her wake. The survivor. “I appreciate the offer, Sylvie,” Dorothea said in a cloyingly sweet voice, “but I’m not here for a husband. I’m here to watch your brother die.”

The camp fell quiet. Stirring, clinking, brushing sounds instantly extinguished. An owl hooted, and Byleth glared at it for disrupting the moment.

“I see you’ve met Miklan, then.” Sylvain patted his mount’s rump too hard. The horse neighed in protest.

“I haven’t, actually,” Dorothea flashed her thorn-sharp smile, “but I know enough of his people to know they need to be put down.”

“And you need to be here for that?” Felix asked. Skeptical. Insulted.

Dorothea sniffed. Derisive, and rightly so. “Nobles protect their own, and all the Archbishop cares about is some stupid weapon. If I don’t see it happen myself, the people I need to tell won’t believe it’s true. So yes, I do need to be here.”

Dimitri glanced over at Byleth, eyes wide and wary. She’d give him credit for figuring out first Byleth laid a trap. He paid closer attention to her moves than even Sylvain, even if he was slower on the uptake. She offered him a slight nod and the ghost of a smile as encouragement.

“Dorothea,” Dimitri began, “we reviewed reports on Miklan Gautier and his associates, and we have witnessed the devastation his band wrought on the local villages. Yet the way you speak now… is there something more we do not know?”

Now Dorothea looked to Byleth for approval. Moment of truth. Byleth nodded for her to continue and Dorothea flashed her a shaky smile before settling back into her cold countenance. “Oh,” she says, sweetly, cruelly, “they didn’t tell you he’s a hunter?”

Dimitri, Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain, and Annette exchanged confused looks. “Hunter?” Sylvain asked, confused. “He’s a filthy bandit that terrorizes the countryside. Poaching wouldn’t crack the top ten worst crimes he’s committed.”

Dedue was steady, patient as he watched Dorothea. He knew how common evil could be in a way his classmates didn’t. Mercedes was uneasy, racking her memory.

Ashe, though. Ashe’s pure terror made Byleth want to do a little hunting of her own.

“She’s not talking about hunting animals, Sylvain.” Ashe’s voice cracked and stumbled over the words. Dorothea glanced, quick and startled, at Ashe, and the silent empathy that passed between them was both wound and balm to the hole in Byleth’s chest. “She’s talking about… people.”

“Oh, are we people now?” Dorothea asked, a dulcet gadfly. “Nobles usually just call us the ferals. That’s why they call them hunters, you know; no need to call them slavers if their targets aren't human.”

Interesting, studying who had heard their parents or guardians use that term before, and what that had entailed. Dedue was unmoved, and Dimitri’s mouth tightened, but Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain, Annette and even Mercedes shifted uncomfortably. Ashe pulled his knees up against his chest.

“Let me get this straight.” Sylvain’s usual easy charm vanished, leaving acrid smoke. “My brother hunts omegas that live on the streets?”

“Got it in one, Sylvie,” Dorothea said, sweet and vicious. “And not just omegas. The alphas too. We’re just in higher demand, and they think we’re easy pickings. We’re not, as the drunk nobles find out the hard way.”

“H-higher demand? Drunk nobles?” Annette stuttered over the words, her brow furrowed deep. “What does he do, Dorothea? Why would people like Miklan… hunt other people?” She gripped Mercedes’s hand gripped tightly in hers.

“Why, to sell us to the highest bidder, of course!” Dorothea said airily. “Brothels for us, pit rings for the alphas, occasionally private sales. There are lots of people in Fódlan who will pay good money to fuck us or watch us kill each other. Wealthy commoners find us exotic, and we don’t have fancy titles to keep us safe. Say, do you want to hear how they—”

Byleth raised an eyebrow in warning, Dorothea stilled, her breathing heavy. A nod of approval i turn. Dorothea did well, but in this, less was more.

The only sounds in the camp were the tent pole in Dimitri’s hands snapping in two and Felix sharpening his blade.

I’d heard rumors.” Mercedes said it almost like a confession. “Back when I lived with the church. I didn’t realize…”

“Bastards.” Dimitri’s head hung low, face in total shadow. His entire body was unnaturally still, to Byleth’s experience. Beneath his hair, his eyes caught the glint of the moonlight, sharp and raw. “And you say Miklan is one of these… hunters?”

“Based on the company he keeps? I would say so, yes.” Dorothea sighed. “I’ve dealt with his lieutenant, Hicks.”

“Wait, Dorothea… did someone try to take you?” Ingrid reached out to take Dorothea’s hand, but Dorothea snatched hers away. “Was it from the opera house?”

Dorothea snorted. “From Mittelfrank? Hunters wouldn’t dare. But I wasn’t always an opera singer, dear Ingrid. I grew up in the slums, and I’ve been running from people like Miklan and Hicks since I was twelve.”

“Twelve?” Annette’s eyes widened. “But that’s…!”

“Too young? That’s practically an old maid where I come from,” Dorothea snapped.

Byleth cringed inwardly. She’d overheard from a conversation between the Golden Deer about Lysithea suggesting that among the nobility, presentation before sixteen was a rare phenomenon, and indicated something terrible happened to the presented, something too terrible to be spoken of in polite company. Judging by the flickers of shame on Dimitri, Mercedes, Ashe and even Sylvain’s faces when Annette asked that question, however, it might not have been as rare as the nobility pretended.

“So sorry, Sylvain, but even if he’s your brother… ” Dorothea’s voice was light as a feather, and sharp as a stiletto.

“Don’t worry about it, Dorothea,” Sylvain said, matching her in that deceptively smooth way of his. “I’m more than happy to help you kill him.”

“You have my word as well, Dorothea,” Dimitri sounded oddly distorted. “To think such animals dwell in Enbarr…”

Byleth should stay out of it. She wasn’t an alpha or omega, and Dorothea could pilot this wreck home just fine. No need to provoke him further. “There are hunters in Fhirdiad too, Dimitri.”

Not to mention the noble alphas who liked to do their own hunting, but that was for another time.

His reaction was both infuriating and heartbreaking. She didn’t want to be the one stripping him of his innocence, but if Byleth’s suspicions were correct, the people who should have were slacking. “Professor, that cannot be right. I know things have been unstable since… since the Tragedy, but my father never would have…”

“I’m sure His Majesty tried, Your Highness!” Annette offered weakly. Ingrid and Ashe nodded with her, making encouraging comments.

“Hmph.” Felix scoffed. “Crime skyrocketed in the cities on top of the increased bandit raiding, boar. Even if your father rid Fhirdiad of all the hunters, they’d be back by now.”

Felix was right. He was never one to shy away from ugliness, a great strength, and a greater flaw.

The Blue Lions spoke in hushed tones. Mercedes and Annette sat beside Dorothea, Mercedes asking gentle questions while Dorothea finally accepted Ingrid’s hand. Felix returned to sharpening his sword with greater zeal than before, while Sylvain leaned against a tree, staring at some horizon only he could see. Dimitri dropped his broken tentpole and stalked into the woods.

“Your Highness,” Dedue called after him. He looked over to Byleth, who shook her head. His eyes were pained, but he reluctantly stayed put, moving next to where Ashe stared blankly into the fire.

Dorothea looked up at Byleth with a silent question in her eyes. Byleth curled her lips in grim approval. She’d played her part well. Byleth saw the glint of satisfaction in response.

Then Byleth walked into the woods.

* * *

“Is it true, Gustave? Are there people who hunt the alphas and omegas in Fhirdiad like animals? And sell them like slaves?”

“Your Highness—”

“I’ve no desire to hear anything from you but an answer to my question, Gustave.”

Gilbert—or Gustave, Byleth wasn’t sure what that was about—hung his head in shame. “It is a blight that plagues all cities in Fódlan, Your Highness. Your father worked diligently to eliminate the brothels and illegal fight rings in Fhirdiad, but the demand remains…”

Dimitri’s head was still low, but he was no longer unnaturally still; he trembled as his fists curled. “Why am I only learning of this from Dorothea Arnault? I’ve been receiving Kingdom intelligence reports for years.”

Gilbert—or Gustave—sighed. “I am not privy to the reports provided to you, Your Highness.”

Dimitri’s eyes narrowed. “Would such matters have been included in the reports my father received in my grandfather’s time?”

Gilbert—or Gustave—was silent.

“I want names.” Dimitri was practically simmering, a volcano ready to erupt. “Names of every noble in Faerghus who has ever been spotted going into one of those filthy venues.”

“Your Highness, I am no longer in the service of—”

“Do not play the fool with me, Gustave Dominic! I am well aware you send reports to my uncle and privy council! You cannot hide behind the church when it is convenient for you!”

“Please, Your Highness—”

“Names, Gustave!” he roared. “If I am to be your King, then you will afford me the same respect you did my father! If I cannot root out every rat scurrying in Fhirdiad, then I will bring my wrath upon the depraved souls who take pleasure in the suffering of others. You will contact my spymasters and you will get me names.”

Okay. That was… a lot, but Dimitri’s heart was in the right place.

Gilbert—or Gustave Dominic (any relation to Annette?)—was quiet again for a while. “It will be done, Your Highness.”

“Good. Dismissed.” Dimitri stomped away so fast that Byleth didn’t have time to dodge. He crashed into her, and Byleth lost her balance, stumbling into his arms. He flushed bright pink when he realized who he held.

“Professor! I—” His face crumpled. “Did you hear that?”

Byleth paused to consider. “Is that a problem?”

“I—” Dimitri suddenly realized he still had Byleth in his arms. He quickly set Byleth back on her feet, stepping away as his face turned even redder. “I lost my temper with Gus—Sir Gilbert. He did not deserve that. I do not wish you to see me so… entitled.”

Interesting. Byleth shrugged. “You were more… royal than usual, but so what? You of all people should have full access to Kingdom intelligence reports.”

He scowled. “I am to be King, with all the pomp and circumstance that entails, yet they continue to treat me as if I were a helpless… a helpless child.”

“That’s a shame,” Byleth said with a teasing lilt, “because you have that alpha command on tap, ‘Your Highness.’”

Dimitri took a deep breath, all the remaining rage draining from him as abruptly as it came. “Not you too.” He rubbed his neck. “Please, Professor. Do not call me that.”

“What, ‘Your Highness’?” Byleth asked. “Don’t worry, Dimitri. I’m a mercenary. I charge extra to kiss the ring.”

He chuckled humorlessly. “You jest, Professor, but it is no small thing to be seen first as a crown and second as a person. To carry out the rituals of royalty but be denied the power to help my people… it is the most wretched sort of gilded prison.”

Byleth patted his shoulder. He jerked in surprise, but then settled down with a soft smile. “Sounds like tonight was a bit of a jailbreak.”

“Perhaps. I am aware of what you did, by the way,” Dimitri added, his eyes narrowed at her. “Did you invite Dorothea with us on purpose? Why have her tell us those things?”

“She came to me,” Byleth replied, “and I took advantage of the opportunity. Mercenary, remember? Dorothea spoke truth to power, and you learned your handlers are editing your intel reports. Everybody won.”

He sighed. “This is no victory.”

Byleth shook her head. “It is. You can get those names.”

Dimitri stroked his chin. “That is my intention, yes, but I fear there will be names on that list I cannot excise so easily.”

“Getting the list is a start,” Byleth said, patting his shoulder. He startled at her hand, but then relaxed. “The rest you figure out later. You’re smart. You’re clever enough to learn how to maneuver politically, but your good heart and strong sense of justice can’t be taught.”

He paused, staring at her wide-eyed. Even in the weak moonlight, she could see his cheeks were pink. Weird. Not like she said anything untrue. “Th-thank you, Professor,” he says, his voice softening. “I appreciate that. Truly, I do. It is simply that… ”

He trailed off, uncertain. Byleth waited. “I do not wish for you to see me as a future king, but as your student.”

Interesting. “You’re both.”

“Yes, but…” He scrubbed his face, frustrated. “The alpha you saw with Sir Gilbert is not who I wish to be when it is simply you and I.”

Fascinating. Byleth would keep treating him like both—his title informed who he was as a person, and vice versa—but she had noticed how preoccupied he was with how others perceived him. “Who do you want to be?” Byleth asked. “When it’s just you and I?”

“I…” He hesitated, head low. Byleth waited, but no answer came. Did he not want to tell her, or did he not know?

“We should get back to camp,” Byleth said finally. “The others will worry.”

“Of course,” he replied, still distant. “Let us head back, then.”

* * *

Everything went wrong from the start.

Miklan and his team holed up in an old fortress tower, forcing them to fight in a narrow area. Several members of Miklan’s crew hid in underground tunnels, allowing Miklan to trap the Blue Lions in the tower from both sides. She’s forced to use her divine pulses to intercept a rogue arrow aimed at Felix’s sword arm, to direct a weakened Dedue away from a blow meant for Dimitri, to yank Annette out of a heavy’s charge path, and Dimitri twice—wait, thrice—wait, a lot.

They finally had him on the ropes. Sylvain tried to talk Miklan down while Dorothea’s hands crackled with power.

Then it got worse.

Well, no. Watching Miklan transform against his will into some nightmare creature by the Lance of Ruin was bad, but it was not _worse,_ thanks to Sothis whispering in her ear.

 _Worse_ started with sure, steady Ingrid, her pupils constricting as her lance-tip glanced off the beast’s armored scales. She spun around, wild-eyed and snarling, nearly impaling Felix as she barreled through their formation.

“Ingrid!” Sylvain screamed, barely dodging a swipe from the beast. “What the hell are you doing?”

The next was Annette: she stopped mid-glyph and turned to Mercedes, advancing upon her like a hound upon a cornered fox. With a weak cry, Mercedes fell to her knees, clutching her stomach. Byleth turned to Sylvain to ask him to assist Mercedes when she saw him looming over Ashe.

Byleth whirled around, assessing the situation. Felix and Dimitri were both still in the fight, but they were flushed in a way Byleth had never seen them in battle. Dorothea had a similar flush, but her eyes were still sharp. Only Dedue was unaffected, though he strained under the pressure of single-handedly keeping the monster off the others.

Some kind of scent frenzy was the most obvious explanation. “Everyone back away!” Byleth screamed. “Get to the arrow slits and breathe fresh air!”

There was another cry, and Byleth realized that Gilbert had been similarly overtaken, advancing with his shield, cornering them against the beast.

That was when Dorothea bit Ingrid’s arm.

“Ow!” Ingrid cried, yanking her arm away in shock. Her eyes lost their glaze, sharpening into their usual battle hardness, though her demeanor was still off. “What are you doing, Dorothea?”

Dorothea put her forearm to Ingrid’s face. “Bite me back.”

“What the—“

“Do it, Ingrid!” Dorothea yelled.

So Ingrid bit Dorothea, and after a moment, whatever mania seized her cleared. Her face still carried the strain of fighting unseen forces, but she was back in control.

“Now bite the others!” Dorothea yelled, dodging Annette’s wind spell to get her hand in her mouth. Soon enough, Annette’s face cleared, and Dorothea repeated her strange instructions. Felix, taking the initiative, nipped at Sylvain as Annette bit Mercedes and Ingrid bit Ashe, and eventually, Annette managed to nip one of Sir Gilbert’s fingers and clear away the last of whatever fugue had grasped the Blue Lions.

Soon enough they were reunited at Dedue’s side, and Sylvain and Dimitri drove their lances into the beast’s eyes. As the beast roared its death-throes, Dorothea brought the sky down upon the thing that was once Miklan Gautier, her Thoron bolt electrifying the remains.

* * *

Sir Gilbert—or Gustave Dominic—informed the Blue Lions he intended to stay behind and dispose of Miklan’s body, which more resembled a toxic sludge bubble than a former person. “I trust you will keep everything that happened here today to yourselves,” he warned the Blue Lions, “and that the actions taken to secure this victory will not be repeated.”

The biting, Byleth guessed, based on the glare Sir Gilbert gave Dorothea as he spoke. Dorothea tossed her hair but said nothing. Her fellow students, however, were red-faced.

The Lions were always quieter returning from a mission than they were when they left, but this was the quietest they’d been since Lonato. Perhaps that was why only Sylvain dared break the silence.

“So Dorothea…” Sylvain began, “how did you know biting each other would work?”

Dorothea, now riding with Byleth, shrugged against Byleth’s back. “Wasn’t it obvious?” she asked. “Forming a bond is the second fastest way to mute an arousal response.”

“What’s the first fastest?” Felix asked, his eyes narrowed to slits.

“Being near people you’ve already bonded with, of course.” Dorothea sounded surprised that they were even asking.

“So that is what we did. Formed bonds.” Mercedes was thoughtful, her inner healer engaged in the discussion. “It surprised me at first, but after Annie bit me I started recalling our best memories, and the memories were even stronger when I bit her back… ”

“That’s how I felt too, Mercie!” Annette beamed at her. “It was much easier to focus once I felt connected with all of you.”

“Is that how you felt after you bit me, Felix?” Sylvain shot Felix a cheeky grin. “Thinking of all our good times together?”

Felix gave Sylvain a bland stare. “We’ve had good times?”

“Ouch, Felix!” Sylvain flopped over, pretending to slide off his horse. “I felt that burn through our bond!”

Felix stilled, his expression darkening. He glared at Dimitri, who shrank in his saddle.

“Sylvain’s full of it.” Dorothea rolled her eyes. “First bite bonds are weak and always temporary. Once the bite marks heal, any magic will dissipate.”

“Why are some of your bite marks glowing?” Annette asked. “None of ours glow.”

“Good question.” She looked down at the glowing spots with a warm smile, but said nothing more.

“Well, it was very quick thinking, Dorothea,” Ashe said, voice full of admiration. “What else can bond bites do?”

“They can get you and your great-great grandkids chained in all kinds of weird situations,” Felix snapped. “That’s why you’re not supposed to make any.”

Dorothea’s head pivoted towards Felix. “No bonds ever? But how do you form your packs?”

“What is a pack?” Annette asked. “Wait, is that what that bite does? Does that mean we can form packs?”

“That sounds pretty fun,” Ashe said. “How do packs work? Can Dedue still join our pack if he’s not like us?”

“I have no need for a pack, Ashe, but it is a kind thought,” Dedue replied, a soft pink blush spreading over his cheeks.

“I’ll join your pack, Dorothea.” Sylvain waggled his brows at her.

Dorothea snorted. “Sylvie, you wouldn’t survive a day with my old pack.”

“So you do have a pack, Dorothea?” Mercedes asked. “What are they like? Is that why your bites glow? Are we joining your pack?”

“No, you’re not joining my—” She tugged at Byleth’s cloak, and Byleth stopped her horse so Dorothea could dismount. Dorothea was visibly struggling against something. The simplest solution would be if Dorothea explained her pack and its dynamics, but she kept quiet, and Byleth had to trust she had her reasons. “How is it that none of you know this stuff? The Black Eagles are the same way, even Lin, and he’s obsessed with this stuff.”

“Well, that’s why we’re asking you!” Annette grinned at Dorothea. “It’s not like you can take a class.”

“But why can’t you?” Dorothea asked. “Have any of you asked yourselves why you don’t know anything about your presentations and how they really work?”

This was beyond the scope of what Byleth expected from Dorothea, but she made no move to stop it, because Byleth wondered too. Judging by how quiet the Blue Lions became, they were applying themselves to that question now. “I was told that only alphas and omegas together can create new crests, which is why it was important they only ever bonded with each other through the claim bite,” Ingrid said, gaze distant. “Otherwise, you could dilute the strength of your crest and be unable to connect with anyone.”

Dimitri, who had been looking increasingly ill over the course of this conversation, nodded with Ingrid. “I was told the same.”

“Wait, seriously? ‘No biting before marriage?’ That’s… wow… ” Dorothea was genuinely appalled. “But you must have felt the urge, right? With your parents, or your friends? How did they… ”

Dorothea trailed off, stepping towards Ingrid’s mount. Whatever she had picked up, the concern etched in her features made Byleth’s chest heavy.

Ingrid bit her lip. Her gaze clouded as she looked at Dimitri, who looked at Sylvain, who looked at Felix. Felix gazed into the distance, likely at the person-shaped hole in all their lives. “When we were kids, we made up a game.”

Felix crossed his arms. “Sylvain made up the game.”

All levity had been extinguished from Sylvain. “No. I helped with the rules, but it was Glenn’s idea.”

Dimitri’s posture stiffened as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Must we dig that foolishness up?”

“Seems like something a lot like that ’foolishness’ just saved all our lives, Your Highness.” Sylvain tugged his hair, staring at the same empty space as Felix. “Glenn called it ‘chomp tag.’ Whoever was ‘it’ had to bite instead of touching. There were some more rules, but that was the gist.”

“So what?” Dorothea asked. “We played games like that all the time in Enbarr. How do you think I bit you all so fast?”

Ingrid rubbed her arm. “When our parents caught us, my father switched me.”

The air switched out of Byleth’s lungs.

“Only time my dad ever hit me,” Sylvain remarked, voice loose and body rigid. “Didn’t want to fuck up the crest baby. He took his shit out on Miklan.” A bitter huff. “Joke’s on him, I’m still fucked up.”

“This is stupid.” Felix scowled, but the way his eyes darted back and forth told Byleth he and Glenn had not been spared, either.

Dimitri glanced away. “I… experienced the same.”

Sylvain raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? I thought if anyone escaped, it would be His Royal Hindquarters.”

He shook his head, slow, distant. “It was the only time I ever saw my father cry.”

Sylvain blew away a piece of hair in his face. “It was a dumb game anyway. Felix always won because he was the smallest and the fastest.”

“Fuck off, Sylvain,” Felix hissed.

_Sothis?_

“Oh yes, I am hearing this as well.” She popped up, shaking her head. “What a ridiculous world this is, to beat children for silly games driven by their instincts!”

_Is it? Instinctive?_

Sothis cocked her head. “What else would strike so much fear in loving parents that they would hurt their children to prevent their acting upon it? A small cruelty, to ward off big terrors. Or create new ones by mistake.”

Byleth tried to recall Jeralt hitting her outside a training exercise and drew a blank. Her father was by no means perfect, but he’d never done anything so cruel. _Are they loving parents if they hurt their children that way?_

Sothis chuckled at her. “How naïve you sound! Love is no bulwark against cruelty. Many in this world are moved to pick up their weapons—or cut switches—for reasons born of the purest love. Love is love; it is not good or bad, wrong or right. It is what we make of it.”

_Then is it wrong? Were they wrong to do that to their children, even if they thought it was the right thing?_

Sothis’s eyes darkened. “Yes. Very much so.”

“So you’re saying they literally beat it out of you,” Dorothea said, and Sothis scuttled away again. “That explains so much about nobles. Did you all go through this?”

“So it’s not dangerous, then?” Annette asked, curious. Byleth noticed the absence of a denial.

Felix rolled his eyes. “You’re all such children. Everything Dorothea’s describing is feral omega stuff. Biting people, forming packs with strangers—that’s what animals do. That’s why they switched us, so we wouldn’t act feral like Dorothea.”

“Call me that again and I’ll electrocute you,” Dorothea said in a quiet, deadly voice. “You really think you’re better than I am? I might be the ‘feral,’ but I’m the one who saved your lives because I know how our presentations work.”

Felix was gripping his sword grip hard enough to break it. Time to intervene. “Dorothea—”

Dimitri put up his hand. “Let her finish, Professor. You were saying, Dorothea?”

Dorothea was never better than when she had an audience, and this audience was eating from her hands. “Thank you, Your Highness. I was saying, look around, Felix. We are the exception, not the rule. We aren’t animals because animals are normal, and _we aren’t normal_. Maybe you nobles can lock yourselves in gilded cages and ignore the rabble, but we ferals don’t have that option if we want to survive. So yes, we use the power our bites and our bonds and our magic give us so we can live in peace instead of polite misery like the nobility!”

She tossed her hair, the curls still flowing perfectly over her shoulders as she faced Felix. “I had my first heat in a dumpster alley and I would rather go through that again than be an ignorant pillow prince like you.”

Felix’s sword handle snapped.

Dorothea, in true diva fashion, stormed off. It was Ingrid who glanced at Byleth for permission this time, and Byleth granted it. Dimitri looked stricken, but Dedue had something suspiciously close to a smile on his face.

No one spoke more than necessary for the remainder of the return to Garreg Mach.

* * *

A few days after the mission, Byleth was walking back from dinner when she spotted Dimitri and Dorothea on the lawn.

“—apologize for Felix’s crass words returning from Garreg Mach. He has… sensitivity around bonds and bonding, but that was no excuse for his behavior.”

“That’s kind of you to say, Your Highness, but no need to worry.” Dorothea smiled sympathetically. “We all have that one friend we keep around because they know where the bodies are buried.”

That startled a real laugh out of Dimitri, warm and rich. “That… is a way to phrase it, yes. I appreciate your understanding. I hope getting your vengeance upon Miklan and Hicks brought you some measure of peace.”

Dorothea stared at Dimitri as if he were some curious new lifeform. “Vengeance? That’s a luxury I can’t afford. I just wanted them to stop.”

Dimitri’s mouth parted in shock, but he recovered quickly enough. “I… I see. Please, call me Dimitri. Do not feel as if we must stand on ceremony.”

Dorothea eyed him warily. “Perhaps once we’ve gotten to know each other better, Your Highness. You seem genuine enough, but I’ve been surprised before.”

“Oh. Ah… very well. The offer is open. Good night, then.”

Byleth leaned against a column, waiting for Dimitri to turn her direction. Sure enough, he spotted her, eyes widening. “Professor! Have you been eavesdropping?”

She shrugged. “It’s a free monastery.”

His lips pressed flat as his eyes narrowed. “This is the second time this week.”

True, and Dimitri was a bit sensitive to such things given how many people jostled for his attention. Handsome, charming alpha (was he?) princes didn’t grow on trees, and if it weren’t an endless parade of omegas angling for his affection, it was other alphas challenging his dominance. Even many of the commoner students vied for his notice.

(Rather an overwhelming amount of attention, come to think of it, but Byleth never had any trouble catching a moment of Dimitri’s time. His dedication to his studies was impressive.)

“I didn’t come looking for you,” Byleth said, “but when I heard you two talking, I wanted to hear how you were both handling it. It was a rough mission.”

Made rougher in part due to Byleth’s machinations. She didn’t regret her decision, but she was responsible for handling any unintended consequences.

“I… “ He glanced back at Dorothea. “I am not angry, though I do not know why you would not simply ask me.”

Two reasons. Byleth considered which truth to give him. She decided on the bigger truth. High risk, high reward. “You aren’t always honest with me when you’re hurting, and that makes it hard to believe you when you tell me you are fine. Dorothea tends to knock more truth out of people.”

Already Byleth had divine pulsed on several occasions because Dimitri had not admitted to being wounded or close to exhaustion, usually to prevent a classmate from assuming risk in his stead. His need to shield others from harm overrode his intrinsic honesty. What he didn’t realize was that he actually put the other students at greater risk when he was pushed past his limits. Byleth protected him from the real-life consequences of that decision for the other students’ sakes, but she would have to address it seriously at some point.

“I… see your point.” Dimitri sighed, rubbing his temple. “My apologies for jumping to conclusions. I will keep that in mind, although I would appreciate it if you had the courtesy to ask me first.”

Byleth shrugged. “Stop lying to me and I will.”

He snorted, a slight smile curling on his lips. “A fair bargain. Perhaps I should not fuss. You have more than proven I can trust your motivations.”

Another shrug. “Fuss away. I can handle it.”

Dimitri stared at her, briefly arrested. “Yes, I suppose you can.”

His shoulders rounded, and he fidgeted, gaze turning furtive. Byleth waited for the inevitable question. “Professor, an I making people uncomfortable by asking them to treat me as they would anyone else?”

Ouch. She knew this was coming, but Byleth thought she had more time to compose an answer. “Possibly? When I was younger, my dad lost a couple big jobs because the nobles who hired him didn’t like how casually my father spoke with them.”

That had been when her father had been first growing his company, and while some of the noble clients were truly obnoxious, others stemmed from Jeralt’s inability to turn down spirits when nobles offered them. The liquor loosened his tongue enough that he forgot who held the purse strings and spoke freely. For several months they’d slept under the stars and foraged for every meal because of the lost coin.

“For people like Dorothea or Ashe…” Byleth paused. Might as well commit. “…or Dedue, their survival relies on keeping the powerful people around them happy. Intimacy makes people vulnerable. Vulnerable people make mistakes. It’s safer to stick to protocol.”

Dimitri stared down at his boots, mouth dropping open. “You truly think Dedue trusts me so little?”

Crap. That was not what she meant. “No! Shit, I’m sorry. Not what I meant. Dedue’s vulnerable to the powerful people around you. They can’t make you dismiss him, but they can make his life much harder if they don’t like his familiarity with you.”

He crossed his arms, hugging them tight to his chest. “I have told him to come to me about these matters.”

“Like you come to me when you’re hurt?”

Well, she got a real laugh out of him. His body loosened, and he snorted when he laughed. Cute for an alpha (was he?). “Good one, Professor. I shall speak to Dedue again. But what of Ashe and Dorothea? I do not wish them to think I would be so callous as to cut them for a toe stepped over arbitrary lines.”

“Dorothea and Ashe don’t know that yet, so be patient with them,” Byleth suggested, “and they’ll see it too. Dorothea might even give you a nickname like she gave Edelgard.”

His head rolled back in amused surprise. “Dorothea gave Edelgard a nickname?”

“Yep. Calls her Edie.”

“I see.” He chuckled. “I suppose if I’m patient I’ll be Dima soon enough.”

Byleth blinked. “Dima?”

“It’s a diminutive of Dimitri. A pet name. No one—” His breath was sharp, wet. “No one who called me that is alive now.”

Duscur. Right. With Dimitri, all roads led back to Duscur.

“Well, Dima,” Byleth said. “Now there’s one person.”

Watching his face when she called him Dima was like watching a flower open in the moonlight, honey-sweet and bitter, lush and gorgeous. Not for the first time, Byleth thought of Dimitri—Dima—limp in a predator’s jaws, his neck bared to her in submission. Something hot and cruel uncoiled within her, perked up with interest.

She was staring, Byleth realized, but so was Dimitri. He was fixed in place, as if her eyes had frozen him into a statue. With a jerk of her head, she broke the strange spell.

“It’s almost curfew,” Byleth said, voice oddly high, and Dimitri, red-faced, mumbled a farewell before scampering away from her.

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

Preparations are easier and harder than Byleth expects. The Blue Lions, made eager with hope, give her a bundle with enough food, wine, and waterskins to feed a pack, and a roll of furs to pad her bedroll or offer for the nest. Ashe sticks one of his precious novels in her satchel. Byleth adds a pile of overdue reports and writing implements. Perhaps after Dimitri drop-kicks her from the tower, she can hide for a few days and get some work done without interruptions.

To remove the scent of other alphas and omegas from her body, Byleth scrubs herself down at the bathhouse, sloughing enough skin off her body to rival a snake. Her eyes gleam jade and silver in the mirror as she catches a glimpse of her abdomen.

Byleth throws her towel over the reflection.

She finds a lockpick in one of the satchel’s side pockets. Byleth doesn’t know if it was left from an old mission or added later, and it almost breaks her resolve. She breaks the pick and focuses on the weight of the water bucket in her hand. When the door opens, Byleth releases with a deep exhale. It feels like an invitation, even if each step is heavier than the last.

What is _not_ an invitation is the lance at her throat when she reaches the top of the steps.

“ _You_.” A deep growl, like an earthquake.

“Me,” Byleth agrees. Not sure how she didn’t see this one coming, but she didn’t, and instead half her water bucket spills over the stone.

Dimitri’s lips are curled into a snarl, his good eye as icy as the well water flowing like fresh blood beneath them. His cloak is gone, but he’s still clad in full plate. Something’s different about his face beyond the typical changes from omega arousal, and Byleth realizes his eyepatch is gone.

“Why have you disturbed me here?” he demands, pushing the lance a fraction closer.

Byleth studies the gnarled, vicious knot of bruise-black scar tissue where his right eye once was, the peak to the ridges she saw spiral to his cheek. Her fingers itch to explore his new topography. _Like Fódlan’s Throat_ , she thinks, mad honey lingering on her tongue.

Once Dimitri realizes what Byleth is looking at, he twists away from her, his lance clattering to the ground as he covers his scars with his hands. Her stomach wrenches.

_He remembers your dumb promise, and he’s expecting you not to keep it._

Byleth is not meant to see this.

“Answer my question,” he snarls, angry even as he cowers from her gaze.

“I brought more supplies for you.” Her eyes fall over his nest. “Although it looks like you have everything in hand.”

Dimitri’s nest is… surprisingly nice, an unfair reaction given Felix’s remarks. Portioned conservatively, his supplies will more than suffice for the heat; he’s also got vulneraries, medicinal herbs, and water for washing. Everything is neatly stacked and well-organized within easy reach. For the nest proper, Dimitri either constructed or dragged up a crude mattress from two old bolts of wool, stuffed with wool and bedstraw. Several heavy pelts are tossed upon it, along with his cloak and…

… is that her coat?

“If that is truly your intention, then drop the supplies and leave me be. You’d not be the first alpha I killed for disturbing my nest.”

Byleth’s rational mind knows that is a threat (his fifth), and that he isn't lying. It’s supposed to frighten her. Instead, it makes her sad. “Not an alpha,” she reminds him before pointing to her coat, “and that’s mine.”

He growls, large and looming over her. “Do not lie to me!”

Byleth stares up at him, confused. “No, that’s definitely my coat.”

Dimitri’s mouth twists into something ugly. “I have no patience for your games. And that is a rag, carelessly discarded. Take it, if you must.”

Untrue. His head droops, hair concealing his eye. He knows he’s been caught, and Byleth smothers a laugh. ‘Borrowing’ the clothing of a favored alpha to pad a nest is one of the few commonly accepted omega courting gestures. His scent shifts, adding a sickly sweet, sugar-gone-off quality to the _blood-burning-honey-smoke-poison_ of his scent. Fear? A cousin, maybe. The geography of scent is still so new to her.

Yet something sparks, warm and bright, in Byleth’s chest at the sight of her missing coat. The coat is not consent, but it’s an opening, and Byleth’s life’s work has been leveraging openings. Summoning her courage, she says, “I’m not just here to deliver supplies. Five years ago, I made you a promise. I’m here to keep it.”

That sparks a reaction. Dimitri swerves to stare at her, mouth open and eye wide with shock. She catches a brief flush of bittersweet honey before his eye narrows again and death suffuses the atmosphere. Byleth braces for whatever cruel thing Dimitri intends to say when his foot slips in the water, sending him falling backward.

Byleth moves with years of finely-honed instinct. Before she’s fully aware of it, she’s caught Dimitri in her arms, easily balancing them both. He stares up at her in astonishment, his good eye semi-dilated from the approaching heat, mouth full and rosy.

His eye is still so pretty, Byleth thinks dreamily. Back when they were teacher and student, his eyes were the precise color of Conand Bay at high summer, when the sun shone mirror-bright over the water, impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began. Now his eye has a wintry chill, tempestuous as the waves in Ethereal Moon. There’s a pretty flush to his cheeks that makes the blue even starker against his skin.

Then Dimitri grunts, struggling to stand again, and Byleth helps him back to his feet. He brushes himself off, as if eager to be rid of any lingering scent.

Odd. She’s never seen him slip like that. Dimitri has a reputation for clumsiness only partly earned; while he frequently breaks objects with his inhuman strength, he is also quick and sure-footed. He didn’t win the White Heron Cup by a landslide as a fluke.

“Are you okay?” Byleth asks, resisting the urge to steady him with her arm.

Dimitri blinks at her briefly before his usual dead-eyed scowl settles back onto his face. Byleth recognizes distress, confusion, and… chamomile? That last emotion’s as unfamiliar to her nose as the wilds of Dagda. “Stay or go, do what you wish,” he growls, stalking back to his nest, “but do not disturb me.”

Byleth stands at the top of the stairwell for some time, blinking, before it finally registers he did not send her away. That Dimitri's words could even be interpreted as consent to sit with him through his heat.

That, Byleth supposes, is probably the best she's going to get from him.

* * *

Dimitri has his nest, so Byleth sets up hers. Hers is more spartan: a simple bedroll on the opposing wall, near the entrance to the tower balcony. She pads it with a few of the pelts from the roll, and stacks the supplies the Blue Lions gave her. Dimitri pretends not to watch, and Byleth pretends not to notice his pretending to not watch. From the corner of her eye, she spots a self-satisfied smirk ghosting his lips.

He’s judging her “nest.”

Fine. She’s not the one who will need near-constant tactile stimulation or will wish to impress a potential alpha mate.

“Your nest is very nice,” Byleth says, and she means it.

“Did I not ask you to not disturb me?” His tone is harsh, but he dips his head away just as he did when she’d praised his work in lectures.

Truthfully, the quality of his nest still surprises her, and that surprise makes Byleth vaguely nauseated. Surprising, because its fastidiousness speaks well of his survival instincts and self-reliance; there’s a discipline to the arrangements she thought forsaken to bloodlust. Nauseating, because it challenges the well-worn narrative of a broken prince lost in the wilds, and the shame of falling into such an easy trap twists and curdles in her gut. Sifting through memories now, she sees a thread running through contradictions she’d dismissed as aberrations: the earthy pine oil aroma from his armor that masks his underlying scent; how they can’t figure out where he sleeps, preventing a potential attack by an alpha; the fact his scent, despite his overwhelming corpse-pain, is still muted enough to suggest regular cleaning.

For a corpse, he works awfully hard at survival.

It heartens Byleth. The Dimitri she once knew was more resourceful than people gave him credit for, yes, but ultimately sheltered. A few hard days on the road always ended with a hot meal and a feather bed; ice and snow were met with fur coats and blazing hearths. There were the countless small tasks Dedue performed, from arranging for extra quills be cut for the Blue Lions classroom to keeping track of Dimitri’s voluminous correspondence with leadership across Fódlan. Dimitri had been kind and unassuming, yes, but he had often been oblivious to the ways others quietly cleared his path. The nest is tangible proof of his growth.

New questions flood her mind. They know so little of his time in Fódlan’s wilds, outside “rat” hunting. What did the change look like? Did someone teach him how to build that nest, how to survive as an omega in the wilds? If so, where are they now? Which changes in his behavior kept him alive in the wilds, and which ones stem from whatever affliction brings the dead to life for him? Where does survival end and sickness begin?

Best not to dwell on thoughts of Dimitri too often. Dorothea appreciated Byleth behaving normally during the lulls, sitting at the desk grading papers rather than fussing, and Byleth trusted Dorothea to ask for help when she needed it. Byleth doesn’t trust Dimitri that way, but she promised him she would sit with him as she had for Dorothea. She will extend him the same courtesy.

So Byleth pulls out a stack of contract proposals to review while there’s still enough daylight to work. She works steadily, applying the eye she developed managing the books for Jeralt’s mercenary company. One such proposal mentions an order of her father’s favorite brand of spirits, and something sharp pierces her chest.

_Dad._

The pain is fresh and omnipresent, but the world has long since moved on. Sometimes Byleth hates that she hasn’t done the same, but then there's guilt at the thought that she ever could. She forgets, sometimes, until a stray thought or offhand remark pokes that raw, bleeding wound in her. Byleth chokes on her breath as the grief rolls over her head, dragging her below, and Byleth follows its current, moving in its flow until her head peeks out above the darkness. Treading through the pain hurts, but Byleth cannot afford to drown.

“Cease your grieving. I’ve no need for your pity.”

Dimitri’s voice cuts through grief’s waves like a ship. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Your scent,” he grumbles at her. “Cloying. Mournful. Wretched. Spare me your melancholy.”

Huh. Even after Byleth merged with Sothis and her scent came to full bloom, most people rarely detect shifts in her baseline scent. “I wasn’t looking at you.”

Dimitri huffs, knees curled up against his chest. “Foolish of you to lie. I’ve one eye, not none.”

Byleth almost laughs. Not because it’s funny, but because it’s unexpected and just enough to hack away some of the tension between them.

“I was distracted by my own thoughts,” Byleth explains in a neutral voice. _Not everything is about you._

She gives him a minute before picking up the contract. Just as she settles back into a rhythm, Dimitri says, “What was it?”

Sighing, she puts the contract aside. “What was what?”

“What were you thinking of instead?”

Anger sparks unexpectedly. _What do you care?_ sits feather-light on traitorous tongue-tip.

Unfair. Dimitri cared, once. Cared enough to sit beside her on starless nights at her father’s gravesite as she cried herself hoarse. Cared enough to give her the space to grieve as long as she needed, even as he gently guided her towards finding a new purpose. If Byleth has, in rare moments of private reflection, wondered if Dimitry hoped she’d find _his_ purpose, allow herself to be swept away on a dark current of vengeance and into an ocean of blood… well, he’s never been selfish enough to ask her to drown with him.

Maybe she shouldn’t be so paranoid. He asked, after all. “I—” She clears her throat. “I was thinking about my dad.”

Dimitri freezes, but his scent seems neutral enough, so she continues. “It’s just… I’ve never _missed_ anyone before and it’s—”

“Hmph. Listen to you prattle on. To think I once thought you above such weakness.”

 _Incredible._ Byleth is literally planning a war around Dimitri’s need to appease the dead, but acknowledging she still misses her father is too much for him to handle? All this from someone who once admitted he didn’t trust her when they first met due to her resting demon face and lack of scent? The hypocrisy is breathtaking. She’s about to say as much when she catches the flare in his scent.

 _Death-blood-rot-burning-die_. The corpse-pain is back with a vengeance, strongest it’s been since after the attack on Garreg Mach. Then the rancid sugar-scent from before she’d guessed to be fear-like, and a pure-honey note as if to draw her closer to comfort him. That’s not right. His scent shouldn’t be shifting that rapidly.

He’s spiraling.

“Fine,” she snaps, frostier than she intends. “I’ll stop.”

Dimitri glances wildly around the room. In time, the corpse-pain and rancid sugar recede, leaving nothing but a frisson of honey.

“Good,” he snaps, and Byleth can practically taste his relief. She bites her cheek in frustration and tastes the blood on her tongue instead.

It’s going to be a long heat.


	6. six (heat day 1, daytime)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His heat is beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings.** This chapter briefly mentions past and current self-harm injuries and contains multiple malicious uses of a gendered slur. There are references to the trafficking mentioned in the prior chapter. There is a two-sentence reference to a prior consensual sexual encounter between two underage parties. Dubcon warnings are now in full effect. 
> 
> My writing soundtrack changed for this chapter to CHVRCHES’s [_Love_](https://youtu.be/e1YqueG2gtQ) [_Is_](https://youtu.be/fKuxh0E9mSI) [_Dead_](https://youtu.be/aRX1Bqf1iJ8). 
> 
> I continue to live for all your kudos, bookmarks, subscriptions, and comments!

**HORSEBOW MOON 1180**

When the biting started…

… it would be more accurate to say the biting never stopped, but it started not stopping with Ingrid.

Byleth spotted it leaving a meeting with the cavalry healers to set up a training schedule for Marianne. (Byleth’s plan, after Hanneman came to her asking for help. Most students blew off Hanneman’s crest inquiries and moved on with their days, but Marianne had been so rattled that it brought her class participation to a standstill. So Byleth took over Marianne’s training regimen to keep her from falling further behind. Learning to heal warhorses was a good way to get Marianne back in the saddle with training, so to speak.)

She’d waved to Ashe and Ingrid, who were on stable duty that week. Ingrid had rolled up her shirtsleeves, and Marianne gasped. “Ingrid, your arm!”

Bite bond marks healed oddly, scabbing over faster than most injuries that broke the skin, but taking longer to fade completely. This bite was bright pink, compared to its partially-faded counterparts from Sylvain and Ashe.

Ingrid blinked, then, red-faced, shoved her sleeves back down.

“One of the foals got nippy.” Ingrid offered, but Marianne shook her head. Their class’s resident animal-healer-in-training knew the difference between a foal bite and a human one. Still, Marianne was the last person who would push the issue. She said nothing more, though her eyes were troubled through their meeting with Hanneman to finalize her schedule changes.

Byleth found Ingrid later as she was leaving the dining hall. She raised an eyebrow and waited.

“Dorothea,” Ingrid admitted. “You never know, Professor. We could run into another of those… things.” A pause. “It must be hard for her to be away from her pack. She won’t talk about it, but I think this helps her feel more at home.”

That was Ingrid. For all her rigid ideas about proper conduct, she never hesitated to break decorum to help another.

* * *

Soon after spotting Ingrid’s fresh bite from Dorothea, Byleth caught a fresh mark on Ashe’s arm and a second on Ingrid’s during the next stable duty. Annette and Mercedes were more careful, but it was clear they had continued the biting as well. She caught Ashe with them one day, comparing their bites, and all three flushed with embarrassment when they saw Byleth.

“Worried about demonic beasts?” Byleth asked, letting a hint of teasing into her voice. Ashe, jaw set hard even as he refused to meet Byleth’s eyes, shook his head.

“It’s not about that, Professor.” Byleth surmised that much.

“It feels nice.” Annette stared up at her, stone-faced, as if daring Byleth to challenge them. So much bravado in such a small package, like a tiny tornado. It might have swept away someone else. “Not like alcohol, or one of Claude’s funny concoctions! It’s like walking around with a warm hug. Who wouldn’t like that?”

And… sure. Okay. Byleth was not a hugger, but she could see the appeal.

“Please don’t tell anyone, okay?” Annette pleaded. “I checked the school manual, and there is nothing forbidding consensual platonic biting anywhere!”

Very well. “Be discreet.”

They nodded in agreement, relieved, and Annette laced her fingers into Mercedes and Ashe’s hands.

* * *

They were discreet. So was Ingrid, and even Sylvain.

Felix was not.

Looking back, Byleth shouldn’t have been surprised. Sure, despite biting Sylvain during the Miklan fight, Felix squawked about “feral omegas” and “behaving like animals” at anyone who would listen. But it was Felix, and Byleth had never met a person more suited to sinking his teeth into other people than Felix Fraldarius.

Still, catching one of your students gnawing on another student in the middle of a lecture was… something.

“Felix?” Byleth blinked at him. “Could you please remove Sylvain’s arm from your mouth?”

Felix had the decency to look guilty as he dropped Sylvain’s forearm, looking like a cat who had been discovered with a missing pet canary.

“Eh, I don’t care, Professor.” Sylvain laughed and waved her off. “Keeps him occupied—ow, shit!”

“Language, Sylvain,” Dimitri said, rubbing his temples.

* * *

Okay. So.

Weird, but… fine. Maybe this was like the scent debate, or that time the students got obsessed with eating teaspoons of cinnamon, and it would blow over. (Not that the scent debate had blown over, but it didn’t reach her ears as often.)

Then Flayn disappeared while Byleth and the Blue Lions were assisting Duke Fraldarius with an assignment in his territory, and the entire campus simmered with tension.

Days later, when Byleth saw Claude comparing bite marks with Hilda on the lawn, she realized the contagion from her class had jumped. Again.

* * *

“Well, Byleth.” Manuela shot her a sly look, and Byleth’s head started to throb. “Care to explain why my class has suddenly been infested with vampires?”

Byleth stared at Manuela, blinking. “Have you tried staking Hubert through the heart?”

“Hah!” Manuela had a great belly laugh. “I am fond of the boy, but that wouldn’t surprise me. No, Byleth, I’m talking about the pack bites.”

Byleth raised her eyebrows. Since Claude had started openly flaunting his bites, most of the class stopped bothering to hide theirs. “You know what they are?”

“Of course. Many omegas become performers. They’re so yearning and luminous, as Director Gottschalk used to say. I may not be an alpha or omega myself, but you pick up the lingo.”

Interesting. Raised a question that had been on Byleth’s mind. “Why is it none of the noble students know anything about pack bonding?”

Manuela tapped her chin, lips puffing outward as she sighed. “I’ve wondered too. At first, I thought it was the Archbishop’s rule, but… no. A few years ago I proposed to Seteth we enlist a bonded pair to educate students on their physiology, and he was enthusiastic about the suggestion. Lady Rhea was hesitant, but Seteth brought her around. It was the nobles who objected. Half the parents wrote threatening to withdraw their children from the Academy that year and the other half demanded I be fired. Well, both halves demanded that. Eventually, the Archbishop the canceled the session, and I’ve kept my mouth shut ever since.”

“I see.” Byleth didn’t see. “Thanks, Manuela.”

Crests and presentation were clearly somehow linked, so why did the Book of Seiros never mention alphas or omegas? Rhea appeared to have a tight grip on the social mores of the Fódlandi nobility, yet somehow the culture around some of their most intimate practices was dictated by forces outside the Central Church. Why did Rhea defer to the nobility in this? How had the Archbishop allowed this to slip out of her vise-grip control?

* * *

During the investigation of Flayn’s kidnapping, Byleth enlisted Sylvain to help her question the locals about the Death Knight reports. He was excellent at getting people to open up when he wasn’t actively hitting on them. Dimitri invited himself along, and Sylvain told Byleth to allow it, using the prince’s stiff but kindly presence to draw even more information from the villagers. Right before they questioned a local omega woman, however, Sylvain rolled up his sleeves and revealed a brand new bite mark on top of his marks from the Blue Lions and miscellaneous Felix-shaped marks.

“Hilda’s collecting bites,” he explained, waggling his eyebrows.

“Sylvain,” Dimitri said, sounding cross, “please do not flaunt those marks. People will ask questions that will be difficult to answer.”

Sylvain laughed. “Are you kidding? Most of the local omegas wouldn’t give me the time of day until I got these. Now that they think I have a pack, suddenly they’re interested.”

Byleth raised an eyebrow. “Our interviewee has been claimed, Sylvain.”

He shrugged. “Still. Can’t hurt. His Highness is just jealous.”

Byleth expected at minimum a sputtering denial, but to her surprise, Dimitri was looking away, his face bright red. A direct hit.

“Why don’t you bite each other, then?” Byleth asked. The rest of the Blue Lions had all bitten someone else at least once. Even Dedue put up with a few bites from classmates not wanting him to feel left out.

Dimitri made a strangled noise, while Sylvain looked vaguely ill. “It’s… not a good idea, Professor.”

Why not? Sure, there had been the switching when they were younger, but Sylvain and Felix and Ingrid had all deigned to bite one another. Why was Dimitri excluded?

“No, it’s not,” Dimitri said, shaking his head vehemently, but the yearning on his face when he stared at Sylvain’s arm told a different story.

* * *

_“_ C’mon, Marianne,” Hilda wheedled as she clutched at Marianne's arm. She gave Marianne the biggest, saddest omega eyes Byleth had ever seen. “Pleeeeeeease?”

Marianne, wild-eyed, finally shook off Hilda's grip and backed away. “I’m sorry, Hilda. I just can’t. I’m sure there are lots of people who would love to—”

“Yeah, plenty of people have bitten me already, but I want you to bite me, Marianne! That way we can bond!”

“No, Hilda!” Marianne squared her chin, her eyes blazing. “It’s not safe, okay? Please don’t ask me again.”

As Marianne scurried away, Hilda turned back with sad eyes. Spotting Byleth, she managed a dim smile. “Hey, Professor. I guess you saw that?” Byleth nodded. “I just… I thought it might be nice for her, you know, Professor?”

Hilda turned back the direction Marianne had gone. “But I’ve got the most bond bites in the whole class—well, tied with Mercedes—so I guess I don’t need any more.”

Byleth put her hand on Hilda’s shoulder. “I don’t think it works like that.”

Hilda looked away. “Yeah, Professor. I didn’t think so either.”

* * *

When Sylvain and Dimitri shot down her suggestion they bite each other, Byleth assumed it had something to do with his being royalty. Then she had lunch with Edelgard, and the Imperial Princess shyly admitted she and Hubert and bitten one another.

“It is a curious thing.” Edelgard gave her a tiny smile as she held up the still-gloved spot. “When I think of Hubert, the spot on my hand is comfortably cool, like a breeze on a hot summer day.”

Between that and Claude’s growing pantheon of bites, Byleth’s mind drifted towards Dimitri’s refusal to be bitten by anyone, despite his open jealousy whenever a student would flash a new bite. It reminded her of the scent talk, how deliberate Dimitri was in absenting himself from that conversation. At the time, Byleth had appreciated it, but now… even Dedue had been brought into that conversation in a way that made him feel included, and he was her only normal student.

Some of the walls between Dimitri and the other Blue Lions had dropped away over the past few months, but it seemed others were only getting taller. Byleth should probably stay out of it, much like the other Kingdom affairs where she’d been sidelined, such as the tension between Felix and Dimitri.

Still. It felt like Byleth was missing something important.

So Byleth went to Mercedes, since she was “winning” the unofficial ‘most bitten student’ contest. Her age and kind yet pragmatic nature made her many students’ favorite confidante.

“Dimitri?” Mercedes’s eyes dimmed. ”I don’t think so. I know he’s our classmate, but he’s still the crown prince, and we… we don’t know what bites do. Every time I ask Dorothea, she says we have to decide for ourselves.” A beat. “I wanted to offer anyway, but Ingrid and Sylvain told me I shouldn’t.”

“And you listened?” Mercedes could be a featherbrain—she showed up to class half-dressed or in her nightgown at least once a month—but Byleth had noticed how her ditziness often aligned with a norm or a rule she felt was wrong. Fortunately, her sugar-sweet nature kept her from causing too much trouble in the process.

“I did.” Mercedes eyes were dim. “Sylvain didn’t try to flirt with me once during the conversation. That’s how I knew it was serious. But Dimitri looks so sad sometimes, like Marianne does, and the Golden Deer aren’t letting that stop them.”

The logical person to talk to would be Sylvain, but if both Ingrid and Sylvain had warned Mercedes off, then this was Faerghus business, and all Byleth would get out of those two were increasingly irate warnings to butt out. So Byleth swerved towards Dorothea instead.

“Why not explain how the bite bonds work?” Byleth asked her. “Why tell the other students to figure it out for themselves?”

Dorothea twirled her hair in her fingers. “Because that’s what they have to do.”

“That’s not a helpful answer.”

“No, I mean—” She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Alphas and omegas who bite each other have to decide what they want their bond bites to do. I already explained most of the basics, but other stuff… it’s not like when alphas claim omegas, where ‘everyone’ knows it works a certain way, and the knowing makes it so. You have to have the intention, and everyone within the pack has to believe the same way. Collective belief. That’s what creates covenants and draws out bonds’ power.”

Ah. Byleth saw Dorothea’s point, although the emphasis on “everyone knows” fueled a new battalion of questions. “So if you told the students about your pack’s covenants, they would adopt those covenants as a part of their bonds.”

“Right!” Dorothea said with a wide grin. “I knew you’d figure it out, Professor. Right now, everyone’s treating the bites like they’re some dumb game. As long as everyone believes that, the magic will fade after we graduate and we all move on with their lives. Given how fussy nobles get about this stuff, don’t you think that’s for the best?”

Byleth nodded, but she thought of Hilda pestering Marianne for a bite, and Felix hanging off Sylvain’s arm, and Dimitri trying—failing—not to stare in naked longing at the other students’ arms.

Would these bites fade so easily?

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

The honey infiltrates her senses long before she’s awake enough to recognize its source. Byleth is a heavy sleeper; her father, and later her students, teased her about it often. So instead it conjures up a memory as a dream: of a shop near Fódlan’s Throat, where a merchant sold a red honey and a promise by the teaspoon. A large, burly companion tucked against her, crowing about his victory in the pits while she drags her nails along his steel-hewn abdomen. Moonflowers and azaleas blossoming as she opened her mouth and sucked the sweet-bitter from the spoon; she watched verdant crimson azure sprout from a bard’s lament as the world shaped and reshaped itself under the hands of a dreaming goddess. Looking into a flame and touching the edges of joy, the knife’s point of despair. The glory of _feeling_ , of living rather than observing, for a few brief moments before the world goes gray gray gray and she nearly screams to break the monotony.

Byleth catches the mad honey dripping; she remembers, and lust pools between her legs.

Awareness comes back slowly. Her world is brighter, sharper now than it was then; her fusion with Sothis unlocked color and music, love and hate, living and _breathing_ within her. She squints against the light as she sucks in another heavy, humid breath.

The stars are faded in the sky. Early morning, then. Rising from her bedroll, Byleth rubs her eyes and looks to the source of the scent.

Dimitri dozes against the wall, still in full plate even as sweat drips down his forehead. The eyepatch remains off, the wreck of his eye having lost its power to surprise her and shame him. His rose-red mouth pants softly, and his skin is peach-flushed beneath the sheen.

His heat is beginning.

Already the air is stifling, as if she really were breathing honey through her nostrils. Byleth almost chokes on a breath before she learns there’s a sort of rhythm to breathing through this: slow, long, and easy, allowing it to settle in her lungs. With each breath the scent grows more enchanting. _Does Dimitri still taste as good as he smells?_

A passing notion of a notion, but enough to sound an alarm in the back of her head. Byleth redirects her thoughts by focusing on mundane details, such as tracing cracks in the floor or counting the vulneraries he stacked. Her stomach rumbles, and that’s an even better distraction.

Dimitri’s eye opens when Byleth starts rummaging through her food pack. The blue of his iris has brightened, a feverish glowing ring against the dilated pupil. He wipes his forehead but otherwise says nothing. Byleth should say something. She settles for offering him one of the sandwiches in her pack. In a few hours, he won’t be able to keep down solid food. “Did you eat?”

He scoffs. “Of course. You act as if this were my first heat.”

“Right.” His easy confidence with his presentation now is such a stark contrast to the prince she knew, heavily suppressed and deeply repressed, even with his facade crumbling in those final dark months.

 _And yet_. There is the math Byleth does not do. The scent. The crack of Sylvain’s arm in the cathedral. They raise questions Byleth has worked hard to suppress.

Dimitri’s face softens a fraction. “It seems some things never change.”

Byleth blinks. “What?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Whenever you’ve something on your mind you think might offend me to say aloud, you flick your gaze away.”

She does?

“The frown you make when you feel exposed somehow is the same as well, I see,” he adds. “Whatever has crossed your mind, spare us both the bother of dancing around it.”

Back in his school days, Dimitri always preferred her honesty to her kindness, and Byleth learned to show him both because he deserved no less. After his reaction yesterday, however, she refuses to venture anywhere near that dark corridor. “Your preparations. Nobles don’t do all of this for themselves. Where did you learn?”

He eyes her suspiciously, as if he senses she changed topics in her own mind, but answers anyway. “The noble omega may play at frailty. The omegas in the slums do not have that luxury. We prepare for heat as armies prepare for war.”

 _Interesting._ Felix was more right than he realized, and Byleth has to think her scent neutral to avoid dwelling on what that meant. “A street pack found you.”

So he _did_ reach out to someone. That’s… a relief. A far better starting point than the one waiting down the dark corridor.

“They… helped me, yes,” he admits, eyes and voice a million miles away. “During my second and third heats. But they were not softhearted. They knew how to survive, and I am an omega even alphas fear. We used one another for a time.”

Byleth ignores the gaping hole in that statement. It’s good that he hadn’t been alone the entire five years, no matter how dispassionately Dimitri describes their relationship. She focuses on the other implication. “‘Were’ not softhearted?”

Dimitri’s expression darkens in a way she hasn’t seen since Randolph Bergliez. “You of all people should know, Professor, that poor omegas are ripe targets for those who enjoy preying upon the weak.” She can feel the hate in his words as a visceral gut-punch. “This war has only increased that demand. I have exterminated many such rats’ nests, but others crawl out of the mire, and I was not there when the hunters came. I will carve their names into _that woman’s_ flesh so all may witness the suffering her war wrought upon them.”

At the last part, his voice softens to the point Byleth strains to hear what he says. It sounds less vicious than when he speaks of avenging the people killed in Duscur, more resigned. As if this were not a promise extracted by his ghosts, but a grieving omega desperate to offer his lost pack _something,_ believing he had nothing to give but more death.

 _Used one another._ Right. Maybe next he’ll tell her he’s giving up vengeance to become a circus performer.

Then Byleth’s eyes return to the wool mattress, the fur pelts, the perfectly stacked piles of supplies. So much care has been poured into the nest that it seems more like a shrine.

_Or a monument._

Byleth didn’t see it before, but that is precisely what Dimitri has built here: a monument to the dead that reaffirms his continued survival, and the implications of that stagger her. The possibilities, the potential to rewrite the entire story of the salvation for the dead… it’s all here, when he’s ready to see beyond Edelgard’s head.

She hides her smile. _I’ll pry you out of their cold dead hands yet._

* * *

By mid-morning, Dimitri’s scent makes the tower air muggy and thick. The inconvenience pales in comparison to how annoying his panting has become. Byleth looks up from the letter she’s drafting to see Dimitri downing another skin of water. Her eyes narrow as she counts the stack remaining. He’s going through his liquids far too fast.

“Shouldn’t you remove your armor?” She’s already stripped off her corset, shoes, and stockings and she’s still sweatier than usual.

Dimitri sneers at her. “Eager to see me disrobed, Professor?”

“No, _Sylvain_ ,” Byleth says, and Dimitri has the decency to look ashamed. “You’re too warm.”

“So you are now the expert on omega heats, I see,” he remarks blandly. “Much as you were on lances and axes and flying when you taught those subjects.”

Never mind, let him cook to death inside that armor.

After a few minutes of Byleth alternating between trying to work and grinding her teeth to keep herself from snapping at him, she tries a more diplomatic approach. “If you want to change in private, I can sit on the balcony or in the stairwell.”

Dimitri rolls his eye, waving her off dismissively. “Your maidenly virtue is of no concern to me. I always wear my armor well into my second day of heat.”

So this isn’t normal, check.

During negotiations for her heat-sit, Dorothea explained that heats spread like wildfires. The need within them begins as a small spark, one that catches kindling and grows. While that deep-seated desire burns ever hot and bright, its spread can be managed with mental discipline, as a natural wildfire can be managed by starving the fire of fuel and suppressing with wind and ice magic.

Thus the street omegas often make games of the heat pain to build their fortitude. Sometimes they refuse to lay down, or make noise, or touch themselves for as long as possible. Making it into a game, Dorothea told her, empowers omegas to take control of the process, to endure rather than suffer helplessly, and to prepare them for worst-case scenarios such as a mid-heat rapid relocation.

So while wearing full armor multiple days into a heat doesn’t _sound_ healthy to Byleth, it’s easy to see how this could be one of Dimitri’s personal endurance games, a way he masters himself and his desires. If it is a game he’s played many times, however, then Dimitri should know if the rules have changed and have adjusted accordingly. (Also, it wasn’t _Byleth’s_ maidenly virtue she wanted to protect. She left her maidenly virtue in a roadside inn stable with a roguish lavender-haired boy a decade ago. He was novel enough to revisit the next few times she met him on the road.)

Irrelevant, however. It’s clear Dimitri plans to die of heatstroke on this hill, and there’s not much to do but let him try. Byleth can strip off his plate and drag him to the balcony to cool down once he passes out. Maybe dump a fresh bucket from the well on him. Pity she’s no good with ice magic.

Disliking the direction of her thoughts, Byleth puts aside the letter she’s been drafting and picks up Ashe’s book. She’s never been one to read for pleasure, but maybe it will be easier to concentrate on something lighter?

It works, for a while. The next time Dimitri grunts in frustration loudly enough to distract her, she’s finished the introductory tale about a group of young nobles who retreated to a country estate to avoid the plague, and the first story in the collection, a surprisingly blasphemous tale of a wicked man having his sins forgiven by the Church of Seiros before he dies. He’s fiddling with the laces of his gauntlet. Byleth tries to start the second story, but the growling and muttering quickly make that impossible.

Sighing, she asks, “Would you like my help?”

“Do I look like I need help removing a gauntlet I have taken off myself nearly every day for years?” he asks, teeth bared.

“Uh… yes?” Was that a trick question?

Dimitri scowls at her and returns to his laces. Byleth waits, arms crossed. No point bothering with the book, even if she’s curious about whether the Almyran converted to the Church of Seiros.

After a snapping sound and a muttered curse, the gauntlet is still attached to his arm. “Fine,” he growls. “Just the gauntlets.”

Byleth nods. As she approaches him, the problem becomes obvious: his hands are shaking too hard to grip anything properly. There’s no way this will be “just the gauntlets.” Byleth looks up at Dimitri, unable to hide all her concern. “Is this… typical?”

“No,” he bites out. He wipes at his good eye with a trembling fist.

She wouldn’t be surprised if he’s overheated, but that doesn’t usually lead to hand tremors. Either way, he needs out of his armor.

Taking off the gauntlets is more complex than she expected; his armor has several rather ingenious-looking pulleys so he can dress quickly without assistance. Once she figures out the tricks, however, the gauntlets come off smoothly.

 _Face and scent even,_ Byleth reminds herself, and she’s glad she did even though she knew what to expect. The burn scars from Duscur is almost invisible; the latticework of scratches and cuts that have collected since are not. Too many of these are new and inflamed enough to inform Byleth that Dimitri’s hand-picking habit has only grown worse over the years. Three of his fingers no longer bend the correct direction and she suspects his left pinky is currently fractured. Tempting as it might be to risk healing the scratches and the break, she has a bigger target in mind.

His gaze is upon her, but Byleth does not meet it. She reaches for his vambraces slowly, as if trying to gentle a wild animal caught in a trap. Dimitri says nothing.

As she travels up each arm, removing the pieces, Dimitri closes his eye and tilts his head back, neck bared and mouth softer than she’s seen it in five years. His breathing is still heavy, but he seems to relax more with each piece of armor she places to the side. When Byleth reaches the pauldrons, she finds herself briefly dizzy at that mad-honey scent of his, the poison she wants to lick from his throat. Unlacing and pulling off his boots gives her a chance to clear her head.

Gritting her teeth, she tugs him to a standing position to unbuckle his cuirass, and then down again to pull it over his head. Still he meekly complies with her removing his armor. The chainmail beneath it comes off as well, though his breath hitches and his body freezes as her hands brush his face, releasing another heavy waft of scent that stuns Byleth for a moment with the scent of mad honey. Turning her face away to breathe fresh(er) air, she refocuses on her task.

Still, her mind wanders a _bit_ as she works. Five years gone and she hasn’t seen Dimitri in less than full plate since she returned. Even with his gambeson, Byleth can see he’s broader and more muscular beneath the armor, but his gaunt frame correlates with the hollows of his cheeks. He doesn’t eat enough, but there’s not much she can do about that during a heat.

When she gets to the cuisses over his thighs, Dimitri finally rouses from meek compliance and lets out something between a growl and a squeak. Glaring down at her, he grumbles, “I said just the gauntlets.”

Byleth stares, and waits. Abruptly Dimitri snaps his mouth shut and nods for her to continue. By the time his boots join the pile, he looks ready to collapse. Even with his strength, wearing a few dozen pounds of metal all the time must be tiresome. Still, he’s too sweaty and flushed for her liking, so she starts unlacing his gambeson.

“What are you—” He bats her hands away with a warning strike. “The armor was one matter, but—”

“You’re overheating,” Byleth reminds him with another stern look. She puts her hand to his forehead. Heat causes a slight fever, but this is too high. His eye slides shut as he pants, and she feels his struggle to keep from leaning into her hand.

“I am in heat.” He chuckles mirthlessly. “That is what happens. It is in the name.”

“Not like this,” she says, and before Dimitri can argue, he’s swaying forward, forcing Byleth to catch him in her arms.

 _Again_.

If she didn’t catch the utterly humiliated expression on Dimitri’s face first, she might’ve wondered if he were doing this on purpose. Feigning helplessness is the sort of stereotypical omega gesture that‘s common in tavern songs and plays, or Hilda and her many, many faked heats back in the Academy days.

Somehow he’s managed to angle Byleth’s nose straight into his scent gland, and she freezes, arms tightening around Dimitri like steel bands as she breathes in that incredible, mind-breaking scent. She wants to lick him, run her tongue along every sensitive nook of his body until he begs her for mercy. She wants to bite his jaw, his hip, his thigh until he begs for _more_.

“Pro-professor?” It’s softer, more breathy than she’s heard from him in so long. It’s a voice she heard only when they were alone, when he relaxed enough to forget his “alpha” voice and speak freely. The sweetness of the sound is so alluring she wants to taste his mouth and see if he’ll be honey inside, too.

Slowly she lowers him to the ground, sitting him down. Now is not a time for fruitless fantasies. Dimitri’s breathing heavily, fists clenched in frustration as she reaches again for his gambeson laces. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Heat exhaustion from wearing your armor too long, probably,” Byleth says as she unlaces the gambeson.

“That’s not what I meant,” Dimitri replies as Byleth helps him out of the gambeson. His undershirt is practically soaked through with sweat, which does an even better job revealing how powerful his body has become in her five years gone. “The overheating, this weakness… I’ve never been so affected before.” Another swipe at his eye.

Byleth swallows. There’s one possible explanation for the difference between this heat and his prior heats. As she debates whether to bring it up, she tugs at the undershirt. His hand wraps around her wrist, firm but clear. “No more.”

She pulls away, shaking off his grip with ease. “The sweat will hold the heat near your body. I can turn away, but you need to change into dry clothes.”

Dimitri shrinks into himself, shoulders hunching over as he pulls his knees close to his chest. “My body is a tool to be used, nothing more.”

Translation: his body is a damn mess. Byleth would honestly be more surprised if it weren’t, given the state of his hands. Not something she understands well, shame around bodies, but Byleth never dealt with anything beyond the inconveniences her chest posed on the battlefield until she fell into that ravine.

“I’m a mercenary,” Byleth reminds him. “I’m familiar with the bodies of people who’ve had rough lives. You say your body is a tool, then treat it like your armor or your lance. You’d never leave them soaking in sweat.”

A pause as he considers the words. Byleth hates relating things this way to him, but she has to focus on the current crisis and leave the residual damage it may cause later. “Very well.”

Even with Dimitri’s approval, he gives a token protest at Byleth stripping his shirt away, as well as his socks and hose, gasping and squirming each time Byleth’s hand brushes his overheating flesh. Byleth carefully averts her eyes, especially from the very obvious bulge in his smalls. _Heat,_ she reminds herself. “Do you have a change of clothing?”

A brief scowl. “Of course.” Another pause. “But it would be unwise to wear it while still overheating.”

Fair enough. She’s glad he’s taking this seriously. “We should move you closer to the balcony for a while so you’ll cool down,” Byleth advises, “and you need to drink more.”

She’ll need a second trip to the well for more water. If she’s lucky, Mercedes or Ashe will be downstairs and she can ask them to bring more food, maybe even send his clothing for washing and take the measurements for a tailor. While his things are clean enough, they’re threadbare with countless sloppy patches. It’s a miracle the gambeson doesn’t disintegrate in her hands.

“Fine,” Dimitri sighs, leaning into her with a half-lidded expression. Byleth bites her lip to keep from licking him. As she helps him stand, slick gleams between his thighs. It’s hard not to think of the dampness gathering in her own core.

The walk with him to the balcony is the longest walk of her life. Byleth keeps her eyes fixed forward, but every tiny movement seems to jostle his hard, leaking bulge into her. It’s big for an omega’s, maybe even for an alpha male’s.

_What a waste._

Byleth is so shocked at the thought she almost drops Dimitri. As it is, she hurries them both up despite his mumbled complaints. When she does finally help him down to the cool tile in front of the balcony breeze, however, Dimitri sniffs the air, face scrunched, and starts listing leftward. Before Byleth realizes it, he’s crawled onto her bedroll, and his face smooths out contentedly.

Fine, so he doesn’t want to lay on a hard floor. Makes sense. Best not to read anything else into it.

Harder not to read anything into is having his body spread out before her.

Dimitri’s body is a ruin. His once-lithe-but-fit body is now heavy with corded muscle, though he remains too thin for his larger, broader frame. Slash, puncture, and claw marks are scattered as landscapes across a map, with a nasty scar on the right side of his chest where his armor was repaired, and claw marks over his right hip that align with a demonic beast’s. Some are old, but far more are new, and few were well-tended. His entire upper right arm and shoulder are a web of mangled burn tissue with new lashes carved into it. Some marks on his forearms and legs look uncomfortably similar to the self-inflicted scratches on Dimitri’s hands he first showed her years ago, and Byleth puts those thoughts aside. They do her no good here.

Still. If Dimitri’s a ruin, well, so is Garreg Mach, and they’re both still standing, both capable of healing. She’s seen how quickly the plants have rebounded even with the cold weather since they returned to this place. Here and now he is oddly serene, even with his obvious arousal and panting breath. Swallowing heavily, Byleth grabs one of the noa fruit juice skins Ashe prepared. “Drink this for me, will you? Slowly.”

Dimitri complies without protest, drinking by the mouthful without issue. Byleth grabs the water bucket she brought and a rag. Dipping it into the still-cool water, she wrings it out and runs it over his forehead. He stops drinking for a moment to look up at her.

“Professor,” he says in the soft voice that haunts her memory, “why are you doing this? I was fine when I was alone.”

Byleth leans back on her heels. She could take the easy way out here and admit he’s right, in one sense. If he had his heat down to a science, which he clearly did, then Byleth is the variable. She is somehow making everything worse.

_I was fine when I was alone._

Yet Byleth has never been one for easy ways out, even when it might have saved both their futures past. She can see why he would tell himself that now. She can even see why he might believe it.

“Even if you don’t need me,” Byleth says, “I wanted to do no less for you.”

Dimitri doesn’t seem to know how to answer that. He goes back to drinking his juice.

* * *

Since Dimitri commandeered her bedroll, Byleth sets herself up in his nest. She expected pushback, but he stays silent, pretending not to watch her with the same wide eye he did when she first started removing his armor.

For the resident tactician of their rebellion, this turns out to be a bad call for two reasons.

One: it’s much more comfortable than her bedroll. Byleth is used to hard living, but sleeping on the ground is still easier on her back than hard stone flooring, and she will regret this later.

Two: the nest smells far too much like Dimitri, his scent deep in the nest itself and heavy in the air around her.

Byleth starts to feel a bit warm, so she helps herself to one of Dimitri’s wineskins, only to immediately spit out the contents. Her nasal passages burn like she just snorted horseradish paste.

 _Is this bilgewater mixed with vinegar?_ Desperate to get the horrid taste out of her mouth, she grabs another skin and chugs. Somehow this one is _worse,_ and Byleth gags, trying not to splurt the disgusting liquid everywhere.

“Do not get wine in my nest,” Dimitri snaps at Byleth from _her_ bedroll.

Byleth almost sticks her tongue out at him but then starts gagging again. After she rinses her mouth out with the nearby washing water, she turns back to him, astonished. “These are rancid, Dimitri.”

He looks away as if ashamed. “Rancid wine is still safe to drink.”

Technically safe, but not recommended. Although it would still be better than tainted water, which could kill… _ohhhhh._ _Oh no._ “Can you… not taste this?”

Dimitri’s expression is listless, sad. Ash and salt seep into the atmosphere. “No. It has been years since I have tasted anything. What of it?”

Not since Duscur, Byleth assumes. Another joy stolen from him by tragedy. Small wonder Dimitri doesn’t trust their food; he must have cultivated careful habits to avoid making himself sick in the wilds on anything tainted or spoiled. Breaking those habits meant risking dependence on others for safe food, and if Dimitri has made anything clear, it’s how little he trusts them.

He’s frowning at her, and Byleth doubts sympathy will be well-received. She tries a different tack. “I understand now.”

Dimitri’s brows knit together in confusion. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I understand…” Byleth pauses for effect. “…how you won that bet against Claude.”

“What nonsense are you… oh, that’s right.” Light dawns in his eyes. “Claude bet me I could not swallow a teaspoon of cinnamon after he saw me eat Flayn’s cooking.”

So _that’s_ how he ate Flayn’s cooking. Byleth couldn’t help but grin. “I was impressed you kept it together. I coughed immediately.”

“It was quite a challenge, even without my sense of taste,” Dimitri admits sheepishly. “My mouth felt like a desert. I was grateful that Ashe was so close at hand with a goblet of fresh water once I hit the sixty-second mark.”

He practically threw the water into his mouth, splashing all over his face, and took both Felix’s and Sylvain’s goblets as well. Byleth snickers at the memory. “Remember how Raphael grabbed a whole handful of cinnamon after you and coughed all of it into Lorenz’s face?’

“I… do,” he says, and there’s a wisp of a smile on his face. “Lorenz’s face was quite orange, and he kept saying that it was a mark of Raphael’s ‘commoner blood’ that he failed, as no true noble would be defeated by something so tiny as a teaspoon of cinnamon.”

Byleth’s smile widens as she starts to laugh. “Famous last words.”

Dimitri, to her surprise, laughs too. “He hacked himself right off the bench.”

“Remember how he pretended he was doing a swan dive?” Byleth cackles, and Dimitri laughs nearly as hard. She can tell it’s his real laugh because he snorts in that dorky way he does when he stops caring who else is listening.

“Swan dive? More like flopping over like a fish!” Dimitri says. Byleth cackles harder, and Dimitri snorts again between booming laughter.

“And the noises!” Byleth is wheezing she’s laughing so hard. “He sounded like a dying cat!”

Dimitri makes garbled choking noises, which Byleth instantly recognizes as a first-rate impression of Lorenz’s dying cat sounds, setting her off laughing even harder, which sets Dimitri off on another round of snort-laughter. “When Dedue had to roll him over—”

Everything screeches to a halt.

Byleth, still laughing, doesn’t initially register how quickly the moment went from mad honey to pure death again. Dimitri’s eye is hazy, unfocused as he grips his hands too tightly, nails digging into the torn-up skin there. “Dimitri?” Byleth asks, quiet.

The part Byleth hates most about watching Dimitri unglue at the mention of Dedue is how much it would hurt the _real_ Dedue to see it happen. Dedue smiled so fondly when he saw Dimitri laughing that day. (Along with laughing at Lorenz’s botched swan dive, of course. Dedue appreciated how absurd nobility could be.) He would want Dimitri to smile at the thought of him, to laugh at the good memories they had.

“Do not disturb me again,” Dimitri snaps, and Byleth is unsure if that’s meant for her or for someone she can’t see.

Byleth feels sick on Dedue’s behalf, wherever he might rest. It’s hard not to feel that she failed her lost Lion yet again.

* * *

It’s quiet for a few hours after that. Dimitri turns away from her, cutting the silence with the occasional shiver and quiet groan. Byleth returns to her paperwork, reviewing reports, one of which includes a potential lead on a mercenary group several of her father’s lieutenants formed. A red-headed archer has been spotted among them.

She drafts a letter of introduction to send with the messenger, then starts on a separate note for Leonie personally, should their intel be correct. It would be nice to have her back. Byleth misses her, for all the bracken between them. (Then again, Leonie might burn the letter on sight. Her father’s old protégée was practically allergic to “alpha bullshit.” She’d even started a “beta students’ support group.” Dedue attended the weekly meetings with a full tray of snacks.)

She’s just putting the finishing touches on her letter when Dimitri grumbles, “Must you persist with that noisy scribbling?”

Byleth looks over at Dimitri. Other than glaring at her, he does not appear to be in any particular pain, though she’s aware heats cause hypersensitivity. Still, Dorothea never had problems with Byleth grading papers during her heat. Deciding not to push it, Byleth smothers a sigh and puts the letter aside. She picks up another of Shamir’s reconnaissance reports to read.

“You shuffle those papers as if casting a thunder spell,” he snarls after a few minutes.

Fine. Back to Ashe’s book, then. She’s close to finishing the third story, a retelling of a tale about a mythical Almyran king, when Dimitri snaps at her, “Are you not capable of turning a page without summoning an earthquake?”

Byleth takes a deep breath. This helps her because his scent makes her less angry with him. This also hurts her because now Byleth can’t stop imagining bending him over her knee, pulling down his smalls, and giving his pert butt a nice, hard spanking for being such a _brat_.

Maybe that’s what makes her so careless with her next words. “Dorothea didn’t—”

 _Wrong_ thing to say. Dimitri’s face contorts with rage and Byleth has to clamp down her urge to wave off the burning honey in the air as if it were smoke. “Do not _ever_ speak of that Imperial whore.”

_Don’t pick a fight. Mood swings are part of heat, as are feelings of possessiveness towards partners and sitters. Apologize and it will probably blow over._

“Don’t call her that,” Byleth snaps.

“What, do not call her what she is?” he snarls back. “If she is in league with _that woman_ , my lance will taste her blood before I—”

_Where is this ridiculous tirade coming—ohhhhh._

“Are you… jealous?” The question pops out of Byleth’s mouth before she can think it through. Yes, she misses Dorothea dearly, their odd friendship one of the highlights of her year as a professor. Her fear of facing Dorothea across a battlefield is stronger than with any of her other former students, but Byleth will not let it stop her if it ends this war.

Dimitri hauls himself to a sitting position and laughs madly, practically choking on it. No snorting. “Jealous, you say? Of that Imperial who—”

He wavers, abruptly, nearly slamming his head back on the stone. Blinking blearily, Dimitri tries to regain his balance but ends up slowly sliding against the wall, eye shut as he groans.

Shoving down her anger, Byleth rushes to check on him. The mad honey has burst from his scent again, and Byleth suspects that response is meant to entice an alpha closer until rut takes the reins. Likely instinctive, though Dimitri would never admit it were deliberate. (Also pointless, since she’s not an alpha.)

Byleth sits by him, checking his forehead, and Dimitri nuzzles into her hand for a moment before stopping himself. He’s still warmer than she’d like, but he may just run hotter due to heat and his crest. When he sways from the wall again, this time his forehead bumps into hers. Again that desperate sweet-honey note rises, masking the poison that’s been poured into him. His mouth ghosts over hers, and when he says, “Professor,” it’s nearly a prayer, high and watery.

His lips are so close, and he is so very sweet this way, soft and aching. Byleth aches to see if colors will bloom and melt if she sucks the honey from his tongue. “Dimitri,” she murmurs, whisper-light and tender, “Do you want me to do with you what I did with Dorothea?”

Byleth thinks his mouth meant to shape “ _please,_ ” but what comes out is a desperate, incoherent mess of a noise, unrecognizable as human. It entices Byleth more than she likes to admit.

“Okay.” Swallowing, Byleth leans in a fraction more. Practically cradling him in her arms, she helps him back down to the bedroll, his eyelid heavy with heat as he looks up at her with a rosy, open mouth.

Then Byleth stands up and walks back to his nest on the other side of the room.

“What are you—Professor!” His eye is dark with fury. “What is the meaning of this?”

“I’m doing with you what I did with Dorothea. _Nothing_.” Byleth crosses her arms and fixes him with her coldest look, and even Dimitri shrinks from her pitiless glare. “Insult her again and I will leave the monastery forever.”

Dimitri is silent, and Byleth’s nose burns with the scent of rancid sugar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: a hands-on lesson in How The Dicks Work.
> 
> Additional Notes:
> 
>   * The book Ashe loaned Byleth is an in-universe version of [_The Decameron_](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23700/23700-h/23700-h.htm). (Ashe is all grown up ~~and has a dirty book club with Ingrid~~.)
>   * [A guide to the pieces of Dimitri’s armor](https://www.medievalchronicles.com/medieval-armour/plate-armour-a-to-z-list/), although my description is a blend between real-life medieval plate armor and Dimitri’s anime armor.
>   * The decision to have Dimitri call Dorothea a whore reflects the changed gender dynamics of this universe (where an omega of either gender would be subject to being called a whore), the extremely complex nature of Dimitri and Dorothea’s relationship in this universe, and Dimitri’s own relationship with his presentation and his history. That didn’t make it right, and Byleth’s behavior in that scene wasn’t much better.
>   * I’m considering adding a “deleted scenes” collection for HS/DN so I can share some of the scenes that made the cutting floor for this fic, including the founding of Leonie’s Beta Support Group, the scene about Lysithea’s young presentation, etc. I’m sure more will accumulate as I work on the prequel and eventually the sequel to this fic. Any interest?
> 

> 
> In the meantime, holy crap, I LOVE hearing all of your comments about this story! Please keep them coming! Folks who are feeling shy, don’t be! I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about the universe, the story so far, or even your constructive critiques.


	7. seven (heat day 1, evening)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BOOM! Magic! Presto! Dick!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are rough right now. I’m good where I am, and I hope everyone else is safe and healthy too. Take care of yourselves out there.
> 
> In the meantime, the story is now E-rated. Not sure if this counts but we're gonna play it safe.
> 
> I continue to be totally blown away by the hits, kudos, subscriptions, bookmarks, and comments to this story. We’re at 4000 hits, over 250 kudos, and over 100 comments (I won’t call y’all out on the absurdly high number of subscriptions relative to kudos lol). The comments especially have been amazing! I owe a few of you detailed responses, and I assure you they will happen, because man I love going out into the weeds with y’all.

**HORSEBOW MOON 1180**

“Professor Eisner, do you have a moment to speak?”

Archbishop Rhea stood in the Blue Lions’ classroom with her usual enigmatic smile. It was the last place Byleth expected to see her. Despite appointing Byleth to this position, Rhea rarely involved herself with the Academy beyond providing Byleth with her mission assignments. From what Byleth gathered from Manuela and Hanneman, this was a new development, and exclusive to Byleth.

Not that she let any of that show. “Archbishop. What did you need?”

Rhea glanced around the classroom, stopping to linger on one chalkboard in particular. Could she sense the magic from Sylvain’s little ‘presentation’? “As you are aware, Seteth is… not himself at the moment.” Sadness infused her words.

Byleth was well aware. “My students and I have some promising leads. We will find Flayn.”

“I have every confidence you will.” Rhea’s face returned to its usual unreadable expression, albeit without her smile. “However, that is not why I am here today, my dear Professor. I have taken on some of Seteth’s administrative duties to ease his burden, and there is a matter I wish to discuss with you.”

“This must be about the biting,” Sothis remarked from the desk where she sat.

 _You think?_ Ever since Claude started showing off his arms on the first-years’ lawns, it had only been a matter of time.

“Don’t be obtuse, of course it’s about—oh, you are sassing me! Well, stop that at once!”

Byleth pursed her lips to hide her smirk. “What about?”

Rhea paused, raising a finger to her mouth as she attempted to compose her thoughts. Byleth did not blame her. “I confess that I do not know how to phrase this delicately, so I will be frank with you. I have recently observed a number of students… biting one another.”

She sounded more perplexed than upset. That was a good sign. “My students learned about bond bites during the Miklan mission,” Byleth replied, matching Rhea’s careful calm with her own china-doll expression. “I believe this was covered in my report?”

“Yes, I recall that.” Some unknown shadow crossed Rhea’s face. “Forgive me, but I do not see the connection between the need to prevent an overwhelming scent response and students biting each other’s arms in the dining hall.”

Crap. She definitely spotted Felix chomping on Sylvain. “It’s a game. The students are stressed with the search for Flayn and the Death Knight rumors. Collecting bites is a way to distract themselves.”

Rhea stroked her chin, deep in thought. Eventually, her expression evened out into its usual serene smile. “Is this why you have turned a blind eye?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” The smile slipped. “You understand their parents may not see the matter as you do?”

Byleth shrugged, laconic even as her eyes narrowed on Rhea. “What’s the harm in it?”

Rhea’s eyes narrowed in turn, but her face otherwise betrayed nothing. “I beg your pardon?”

“If students wish to bite one another in a consensual, non-sexual manner, why would anyone object?”

That startled genuine shock out of Rhea. It was swiftly replaced by a more guarded version of her usual expression, a face for approaching an opponent. Playing the fool was rarely so enjoyable as it was at that moment. “Forgive me, my dear, but did you just ask me why your students’ parents and guardians would wish us to prevent them from biting one another as toddlers might?”

“I did.” Byleth ruthlessly suppressed the smile from her face and voice. “There is clear evidence of a biting instinct in alphas and omegas, one the nobility goes to great lengths to suppress. Why?”

Now came the waiting. Byleth could see thoughts churning in Rhea’s mind, but the content was still a mystery. There, again, was that ancient and ageless scent wafting from her. More and more the scent whispered kin to Byleth’s mind, even more strongly than Seteth and Flayn’s unplaceable-yet-also-familiar scents.

After a time, Rhea came to her conclusion, and met Byleth’s eyes again. “Perhaps I am misreading the situation, Professor,” Rhea began in her most soothing voice, “but would I be correct in saying that is not the question you wish to ask?”

Yes and no. Byleth’s lips curled slightly, and Rhea’s in turn. “I see where Dad got his chess skills.”

Rhea’s face lit up, making her look younger and brighter, her scent almost human. “He taught you?”

Another shrug. “Hard to book learn on the road. Dad had to get creative. We should play sometime.”

“I would enjoy that very much.” Rhea‘s face bloomed like magnolia trees in early spring, and Byleth felt her own face soften in turn. “You may speak freely, my dear.”

Byleth paused to compose her question, and Rhea was gracious with her patience. This might be the only chance Byleth would get answer some of the questions she’d been privately scouring the library to find. “While studying the Books of Seiros, I’ve noticed that the scripture never mentions presentation, despite every crest bearer being an alpha or omega. The earliest religious doctrine and scholarly works also ignore the issue.”

Rhea raised an eyebrow. “Every crest bearer, Professor? Have you met every crest bearer who ever lived? As Dr. von Essar would say, my dear, correlation is not causation.”

False flag. “Dr. von Essar’s genealogical review of crest-bearing noble families supports my statement. They are intrinsically linked, yet the Book of Seiros never addresses it. Why?”

Now Byleth waited. The response took longer than the question to formulate, which already made it suspect. “It is mentioned within the fourth volume of the Book of Seiros, but that book was struck from canon. The goddess taught that all love is sacred, including the love among alphas and omegas, and that any abuse of the power alphas are granted over their omegas is disrespectful to the goddess. That is the only official position of the Church of Seiros on the matter.”

Untrue.

Well, perhaps not untrue so much as inaccurate. It was true that the Central Church almost never commented on alphas and omegas. The cadet churches, however, had done so at great length. Leaders in the Western Church propagated many of the ideas Dimitri and Ingrid mentioned about saving their bites for marriage, as Dorothea had put it, while the few remaining texts from the Southern Church advocated for strict curtails on the freedoms of omegas for their own mental well-being. Tomás, expertly hiding his disgusted face at Byleth’s careful inquiries, pointed her to a few references in Southern Church texts that Seteth missed in his purges. Some of those mentions were downright fetishistic, one suggesting keeping omegas on leashes in public spaces to keep them calm and centered. Byleth had seen that on occasion while traveling through the more populated parts of the Adrestian Empire, and had assumed it was a sex thing. Nothing she read changed her thoughts on the matter.

Then there was Julius Johannes Hellman.

Julius Johannes Hellman had been a prominent bishop of the Eastern Church at its peak. He dedicated his life to cataloging all sexual acts between all combinations of gender and presentation, leading to his seminal work, The Compleat Guide to The Proper Conduct of Alphas and Omegas. Each “act” was described in lurid detail, illustrated for the reader’s benefit, and rated on their degree of acceptability or profanity to the goddess, with rankings changing based on the genders and presentations of each of the parties.

Apparently the Central Church took the rare step of officially disavowing the book and condemning its contents as antithetical to church canon. The book was still in circulation, however, considered a classic among certain circles due to its exhaustive detail of human sexual deviance. Byleth first learned about the book when she confiscated Sylvain’s copy, as he’d been showing off to the rest of the Blue Lions during class.

So inaccurate at best, and curious to Byleth. Why would the Central Church allow the cadet churches to spread clear misinformation, especially if the Book of Seiros contradicted them? Speaking of the Book of Seiros, that was the first time Byleth heard any mention of the missing third and fourth volumes. “So those books still exist?” Byleth asked. “Why aren’t they included in the canon?”

“Their provenance could not be verified to the cardinals’ satisfaction. It was a decision made several hundred years before my tenure,” Rhea explained. “We still possess the volumes in our collection for historical purposes. I shall have one of my assistants transcribe the appropriate passages for you.”

Sothis scoffed behind her, and Byleth agreed. Bullshit. “I’d like to see the original.”

Rhea gave her an indulgent smile, one with just enough teeth to convey her warning. “Alas, dear child, I am afraid I cannot indulge you. The books are extremely old and delicate. We only allow trained scribes in controlled environments to handle them.”

In other words, over Rhea’s dead body. Rhea wasn’t making excuses to leave, however, merely watching Byleth and waiting. Byleth was being permitted to try again, and she wasn’t sure if she risked revealing more than she intended by taking Rhea up on that silent offer.

_Sothis?_

“Yes?”

_Should I sacrifice a piece here?_

Sothis stroked her chin. “I suppose you must. I do not see this opportunity repeating itself unless you give her incentive.”

_Okay. Thanks._

“Professor Eisner?” Rhea asked. “Was there anything else?”

Byleth inhaled, taking in hints of Rhea’s scent. Alien to the natural land of Fódlan, yet familiar, almost nostalgic to Byleth. A nostalgia for a time and place beyond her reckoning. A scent that said _kin,_ despite her father’s warnings.

Time to sacrifice a piece.

With a deep breath, Byleth presented her evidence: “Since learning I have a crest, I’ve tried to learn what my presentation is. I don’t have a rut drive or a heat cycle, but I also never started my menses as unpresented women do. Most of my life I have been told I was scentless, but now my alpha students tell me I smell delicious, and my omega students say I smell safe. I am told this is an anomaly.”

Rhea’s mouth quirked, her eyes sparkling with interest. “How intriguing you are, my dear Professor. Tell me, what conclusion did you draw?”

Byleth took a deep breath, steadying herself. Speaking this aloud made her stomach churn, but she had ruled out the possible, so only the impossible remained. “That I am none of them.”

The Archbishop stayed quiet a long time, the quirk broadening into a smile. “That is one interpretation of your evidence.”

In other words: right track, wrong direction. “Explain.”

“If you exist outside the traditional dynamics, why would your initial presentation be a traditional one? Consider your history, and ask yourself what else might explain your experiences.”

Huh. There was one other possibility Byleth had considered, but she ruled it out due to the absence of any presentation heat or rut. If Byleth had read Rhea correctly, however, not only was that option back on the table, it explained several other mysteries about Byleth as well, starting with the sudden thirst for intimacy around her sixteenth birthday.

She wished Rhea would come out and say it, but Byleth might be slow to trust too if she had a scent as alien as Rhea’s. Perhaps she had come by that lack of trust honestly. (Perhaps Byleth even had her own issues with trust to consider.)

So she would take this as the gift it was, and return to Rhea when her thoughts were better formed. Byleth nodded in gratitude. “Thanks, Archbishop.”

Rhea smiled back with something real in her ageless smile. “It is my pleasure, dear child. I have other matters to which I must attend, but when you are ready, come find me, and we shall make time to play another round.”

With that, Rhea strolled out of the classroom, her mysterious scent lingering long after she left.

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

She’s bored.

Byleth loathes boredom. It feels too much like _before_ , when the flash of her sword and the blood in her wake were fleeting diversions to a mind yearning for novelty. So much of her past is blurry days and sharp fragments of nights she tried to find something, anything, other than more nothing. At Garreg Mach, her life became so full it overwhelmed her, and not a day passed she regretted it.

She didn’t bring weeks of back paperwork up here as a buffer, after all.

She also didn’t _not_ bring weeks of back paperwork up here as a buffer.

Boredom also means having nothing to do but watch Dimitri pretend not to glare at her while she sits around inhaling his scent and trying to not think about all the other things she wants to do. It never ceases to amaze her how he smells like a sweet poison, bitter-tinged and cloying. Like something that would _fuck you up_ if you dared taste it. Of course Byleth, who yawned at danger, would find it delightful and intoxicating.

Between nonexistent memory and the present moment, Byleth can practically taste him on her tongue, which is why she needs air. _Fresh_ air, not the drug-like fog of Dimitri she’s been breathing all day.

The tower balcony will suit her well enough. It’s chilly, and the vespers bells just rang, but there’s a partition that will block him from her sight and hopefully muffle the “sound” of her reading Ashe’s book.

When she stands, putting on her coat, Dimitri jerks from his curled position to look up at her. “I’m just going to the balcony,” Byleth reassures him.

He scowls. “I did not ask.”

Not in words, but his scent went wild when she stood, rapidly losing their bitter notes to pure honey. Definitely a reaction to keep her from leaving. An annoyingly effective one, if not for the reasons most would think. She dislikes the edge of desperation in his pure-honey notes. The bitterness is what heralds the intoxicating nature of mad honey.

It's chilly on the balcony, but Byleth gulps in the fresh air, clearing cobwebs she hadn’t noticed forming. His too-sweet scent still wafts from the door but the pull on her senses has lessened. She tucks into a corner and pulls out Ashe’s book, using a light flare spell to illuminate the pages. Not ideal, but gives them both some much-needed space without abandoning him entirely.

It’s at page 69 that Byleth realizes two things.

One: the next story in the collection is an erotic tale of an alpha abbess at a monastery spying on one of her monks while he fucked an omega in her chambers; then, after entering the monk’s chambers and discovering the young omega had been driven into a reactive heat state by the vigorous fucking, proceeded to knot the omega’s brains out. This must be some kind of special edition, because the author did not hesitate to linger both on the monk and the abbess’s quite thorough debasing of the placefiller omega, and there are still ninety-six more stories in this collection, so Thanks For Not Helping, Ashe.

Two: there are muffled moans coming from the tower’s main chamber.

Instinctively Byleth reaches for her sword before remembering she chose to leave her weapons at the tower base. Then there’s another moan, and it clicks into place.

Right. This is a heat, after all, and he hasn’t relieved himself once.

Dimitri has been remarkably restrained so far. Dorothea had checked if Byleth was okay with her masturbating during the heat, and Byleth agreed it was fine. They’d hung a sheet to create an illusion of privacy, and Byleth used beeswax to plug her ears, which only worked so well with an ultrahorny opera diva who screamed from her diaphragm. This time, however, the Blue Lions assembled her supplies, and they forgot to add the beeswax.

Instead Byleth is stuck as her ears strain to catch more of his pretty, filthy sounds. Dimitri’s moans are small, softer and higher than the surly growl she’s become uncomfortably used to hearing from him. There’s a dampened aspect to each moan; he likely put her pillow over his face to smother sounds. It’s endearingly shy, reminiscent of the boy prince she once knew. If there are words, they’re lost to the pillow.

What does he look like right now? She’s had the pleasure of seeing most of his body, but not like this. Is he lithe and sinuous, the way he’d been when he danced for the White Heron Cup? Or is he harsher, brutishly pumping his cock, desperate for release? Is he even bothering with his cock when there are other things his body needs more?

If she walked in, would he ask her to—

 _Don’t go there._ The point of coming out here was to _not_ do something stupid.

Yet despite herself, Byleth’s fingers creep inside the waistband of her shorts. As she toys with the folds of her cunt, she’s almost amused by how wet she is. Is she wetter than Dimitri? Or is he glass-slick, fucking himself on his fingers, imagining an alpha’s knot filling him to the brim?

Imagining _her—_

_Don’t go there._

Right.

As she makes out more of Dimitri’s breathy little moans, Byleth settles into her familiar rhythm. Gentle waves of pleasure wash over her system as she steadily increases her tempo.

There’s a lovely pulsing warmth to her touches and even a small, shudder-y peak, but it feels… off. Sweet when she’s craving spice. Meanwhile, Dimitri’s cries have started to pierce the pillow, frenzied sobs of need that set Byleth on edges she never knew existed. She bites her lip to keep from groaning in frustration, legs sliding as she bears her fingers down.

Not enough, not for what she’s craving. She wants to claim, consume. She wants to sink into wet and willing flesh. She wants to…

… _ah_.

Right.

She’s never tried this before. She knew the _what_ of alpha women’s rutting when she came to Garreg Mach, but not the _how_. Byleth soon learned that while she had no shame asking how alpha women bred omegas, everyone else had a heaping load of it, and that made learning specifics awkward.

She finally got her chance when the Blue Lions and Golden Deer escorted Rhea to subdue the remaining forces of the Western Church’s rebellion. With Rhea in tow, the Church sprang for inns rather than forcing them to camp for the journey. Catherine usually insisted they stay at inns when they traveled with her anyway, likely so she could enjoy the attached taverns. That night, after chasing her students away from the bar and into their rooms, Byleth bought Catherine a couple (dozen) rounds. In return, Catherine gave Byleth the weirdest biology lesson of her life.

_“My dick? That shit’s literally magic.” Catherine draped a heavy arm around Byleth, knocking her chest into her stein. The stein tipped, spilling ale across the bar. “Literally! You just think about your dick and BOOM! Magic! Presto! Dick! I can fuck a baby into any omega RIGHT ON THIS BAR, bigger n’ harder than any skindicked dastard, and I don’t even have to take off my fuckin’ armor! BOOM! Dick!”_

So it was like a strap harness, perhaps akin to the pricey magic-infused models that promised real sensation. Unfortunately, Catherine passed out in the middle of her “lesson,” and the next morning was too hungover to tolerate follow-up questions. Among the questions still haunting Byleth are if she actually has to say the words “BOOM! Dick!” to make it happen, or if that was just too much ale talking. “BOOM! Dick!” does not seem like a good reproductive strategy. (Not that any of this screams “good reproductive strategy,” but that is another matter.)

Thus, Byleth had never tried.

It’s not that Byleth hasn’t been curious. What stops her is the gray space, beyond alpha and omega, in which Byleth resides. Even as she enjoyed alpha and omega bedmates, she’d been detached from their experience. It was only when Sothis awakened that Byleth’s _true_ presentation began to emerge, culminating when they merged in the darkness of Zahras. Back then she’d been a mess of grief, sensory overload, and self-aware suppression, keeping the seal upon her new magics tight for everyone’s sake. Manifestation would break the seal, galvanize the magics simmering within Crest of Flames. Her “not an alpha” gimmick would fly straight off this balcony, and she and Dimitri…

…irrelevant. Even if he weren’t in the thrall of the dead, she’s a god-touched mercenary and he’s only Not King on a technicality. This isn’t Ashe’s dirty book.

Dimitri moans again, and Byleth’s mind slides right back on track.

Byleth is bored of gray spaces. She’s tired of observing her life instead of living it for herself, of reacting to fate instead of seizing her future by the reins.

Byleth is so tired of _gray._

So where to begin, seizing the reins?

 _Intention,_ Byleth supposes. That’s what allows the wild magics of the crests to find form. It reminds her a bit of Dorothea’s explanation of how bonds form covenants: belief rewriting the rules of reality, making the intangible, tangible. She has to hold the intention in her mind, and there’s only one way Byleth can think of to make her intention crystal clear.

“Boom dick,” Byleth whispers to herself.

There’s a moment, Byleth’s breath frozen in her lungs, when nothing happens. Then it unsticks, releases, and something inside her shatters, magic flowing through her veins in a pleasant thrum. It’s almost as easy as Catherine bragged, Byleth focusing through gritted teeth to manifest herself. The shape of it appears first, glimmering and ephemeral, but by concentrating, Byleth finds it becomes tangible. Soon enough in her hand is a gleaming seafoam cock, warm and surprisingly firm, protruding from her as naturally as a male-bodied alpha’s might despite the shorts she still wore. The color makes it seem unreal, much like the stone and wood toys she’s used in harnesses, but there is a distinct sense of pressing upon a part of her own body, moreso even than with the enchanted varieties.

Then she shakes her head, imagining it clearing away. The cock shimmers out of existence, as if it had never been. Another whisper of “boom dick” and it returns, faster and brighter this time than before.

So, there it is. She is not an alpha, but she is not _not_ an alpha.

 _Fucking weird,_ some dim part of her mind that sounds like Leonie remarks, but Byleth’s arousal and curiosity are firmly in charge here.

Now to explore. Byleth curls her fingers and takes an experimental stroke.

It’s… different. Not better. The sensation overall is duller than the precision-strike satisfaction of touching her clitoris, diffused into more area. Still, there’s a lovely blunt-instrument sensation as her hand strokes over the “skin” of the shaft and onto the head. She thinks there will be much to learn, but instead Byleth finds the pace of her curled fingers similar to the one she’d use to stroke herself normally. She has to be firmer than she might have been, but it works, oh, it _works_ , and each time Dimitri cries into the pillow Byleth moves faster, harder, imagining his skin flushed and the notch of his clawed hip as she teases his cock, mad-honey scent sharp and thick in her nostrils as she thrusts herself into his wet and eager hole as he sweetly begs her to use him mark him knot him—

—now Byleth is the one covering her mouth as she explodes into her hand, her body shuddering with her want. Her legs shake as if possessed and gleaming magic spills over her palms in thick spurts. Aftershocks strike like tiny thunder magic bolts.

Her body’s heavier than it usually is after orgasm; this method of self-pleasure is more consuming. The ephemeral nature of her spend disappoints until Byleth remembers how much easier the cleanup is. As it is, there will be no hiding what she was doing. She wipes her forehead and discovers hair sticking to her face.

The cock dissipates with a shake of her head. Bizarre, but Byleth is no longer a gray space. She is in a space all her own, verdant crimson azure, and for the first time since this began, Byleth’s body hums with something other than pleasure: a small coil of fear.

She puts that aside for now. Fear will not serve her here, not of herself, and not of what that means for Dimitri. It’s better to know. Plus, she’ll never have to worry about forgetting a harness or have to shell out for one of those expensive models with the runes. That’s something, at least.

With a final deep breath of untainted air, Byleth grabs Ashe’s dirty book and hustles back into the main chamber.

Dimitri is still in her bedroll, to Byleth’s annoyance, and covered in crucial places with a pelt, to her frustration. She itches to slap that knowing smirk off his full, red mouth. Better yet, how would her new toy feel with his mouth wrapped around it? Would he swallow the whole thing eagerly, or choke as she fucked his face with it, tears falling from his pretty eye?

“P-professor?”

He sounds almost frightened, and Byleth blinks. She’s been staring at him, and he’s practically gasping for air, transfixed, as if physically unable to look away from her.

Did she scare him?

Does she care?

“I’m going to bed,” Byleth announces. She tosses her cloak into his face, ignoring his sputter, and flops back onto his nest. Her eyelids are already drooping, and as she falls asleep, she wonders, distantly, how long she has been lying to herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: questions get asked and answered; difficult conversations are finally had.
> 
> Worldbuilding Notes:  
> 
> 
> * Yes, Julius Johannes Hellman is a direct ancestor of Lorenz Hellman Gloucester. And yes, the Golden Deer did find out and give Lorenz massive amounts of shit about the fact his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa accidentally wrote the Fódlandi _Kama Sutra_.
>   
> 


	8. eight (heat day 1, night)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things are too big even for kings and dukes and emperors. Some things are too big even for _Byleth_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings.** This chapter contains one character having a serious mental health episode, as well as discussion and viewing of a significant prior physical trauma and **a discussion of prior sexual assault**. Please heed my warnings and take care of yourselves.
> 
> [Mood music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1NnyRRyqC0) for this chapter.
> 
> Y’all keep showering me with love, kudos, and amazing comments, and I give you this crippling misery in return. I’m a monster. (Don't stop, though.)

The next time she drifts back to consciousness is even slower than the last, interspersed with a rare bout of dreaming: they’re in the tea gardens, and it’s five years ago, before he and Garreg Mach were ruins. Dimitri stares up at her with two eyes and fever-bright hope, sipping the chamomile tea she always prepares for him.

Byleth sets her cup down, studying the blush on his cheeks. “I kissed you on top of the Goddess Tower,” she tells him.

Dimitri spits out his tea. It’s so undignified she can’t help but laugh. “D-don’t make jokes like that, Professor,” he murmurs, his face devastated, and her laughter dies.

“I did,” Byleth insists. “I kissed you so hard your mouth bled from it.”

His breathing is rapid, shallow. “I would have remembered. _I would have remembered._ ”

“You can’t remember what never happened,” Byleth says, “because I made it so it never did.”

He shakes his head, frantic. Panicked. Byleth looks around as the flowers in the tea garden begin to wilt, and mold covers the cakes he can’t taste. “I still would have remembered,” he sobs in protest, tears falling from his eyes. Rust blooms upon the table where they splash down. “I can’t forget you.”

“I had to do it,” Byleth explains, hating her calm detachment as he falls apart in front of her. She takes his hand in hers. Dimitri’s fingers grip hers tightly, but it doesn’t hurt here. The buildings crumble around them but nothing hurts her here. “I stopped. I undid it. Now it never happened. I told myself it was the right thing to do. That the price was too high. But I was wrong, wasn’t I? I should have let it happen, damn the consequences.”

Byleth takes his wet cheek in her other hand. “I could have saved you, and I didn’t.” She feels him tremble, and shakes in return. "I should have claimed you."

The sound he makes is frantic, desperate as Byleth leans in closer, her mouth over his. Their world is crumbling, but there’s still time, time to save him—

* * *

—then another noise, and Byleth cracks her eyes open. They’re in the Goddess Tower, five years gone, and she did not—

—did not what? Already the dream slides from her memory.

The noise again. It’s him, it’s _him_ , desperate and gorgeous, and Byleth shifts enough to watch through her sleep-gritted eyelids.

He’s as beautiful as she imagined, a creature of pure need limned by moonlight, her cloak held to his nose as his other hand frantically pistons inside himself. He sobs into the folds of her scent, and Byleth fights the satisfied curl of her lips. His keening cries have the reverence of the devotionals he once whispered in the cathedral. The heat inside her flares higher than the candles at the altars.

A king, on his knees for a goddess.

_Where he belongs._

* * *

When she wakes again, he is still tangled in starlight and her cloak, but his eye burns brighter than the Blue Sea star.

Byleth rolls over, propping her head up in her hands. “Are you okay?”

Dimitri laughs, bitter. “You should know better by now than to ask me that.”

Good point. Byleth’s eye traces the drape of her cloak over his body. “I have a question for you.”

Dimitri scowls. “I’ve some of my own, and you will answer them before I indulge any more questions of yours.”

Byleth considers her options. It’s not that she doesn’t wish she could be honest with him, but she has truths and obligations buried in her dead heart and its stone proxy that would break _any_ world, much less one as fractured and distorted as his. Some things are too big even for kings and dukes and emperors. Some things are too big even for _Byleth._ As Dimitri so easily breaks fragile things in his hands, so Byleth could break his mind with mere glimpses into the ancient and ageless things residing within her chest.

_And yet._

She once wanted to harden his heart, not enfold it in her shelter, and she was right to dream that dream. How many times has he been left defenseless when the protection given became a cage, kept him from finding his way to safety?

Byleth wants to see Dimitri walk out of the darkness. She wants to see him stand in the sun. That means trusting him to muddle through, even when her instincts scream at her to hold him here, keep him from walking down the dark corridors of her existence and his.

Finally, she sighs, already regretting her decision. “Okay.”

“Why do you say you are not an alpha?”

Byleth raises her eyebrows. Not what she expected, more and less dangerous than what she had. “Because I’m not one.”

A scornful huff. His skepticism could unmake gods, and she would know, wouldn’t she? He holds up her cloak as a banner of disbelief. "The scent of this says otherwise."

It does not say that, but not even Byleth knows precisely what it _does_ say. All she has are theories scraped from conversations with Rhea and Sothis, thin as they are. So how to explain what she is? Byleth has never hit upon a good answer in her own mind, and Rhea’s “explanations” were more thought exercises than hard facts. “When I say I’m not an alpha, I mean that I am not an alpha the way you, or anyone else, understands alphas.”

Dimitri’s eye narrows into a burning blue slit. “Explain.”

She takes a deep breath. “You went to great lengths to make people believe you are an alpha, right?” Byleth asks. “Yet despite that, you can never become an alpha yourself.”

His eye widens, and his mouth thins. A long silence hangs between them before his gaze drops away from her. “Nor would I,” he confesses finally, the words rusty and strange in his throat. “I have no desire to be an alpha.”

“What?” Byleth blinks. “No desire at all?”

Dimitri shakes his head. “None. It is true as a child I expected I would be an alpha, but once I presented, I never questioned why I was an omega. The farce of my past self was solely to ascend to my father’s throne in my own right, so that I might gain salvation for the dead.”

His eye closes. “I do not hate that I am an omega. I hate that I do _not_ hate it.”

 _Like Felix hates it._ Small wonder Dimitri always seemed so guilty about their shared presentation.

Still. This is not what Byleth expected, and perhaps that’s her shame, thinking _of course_ he would rather be an alpha, the implication being that omega is somehow lesser when both show strength and fortitude that outstrip even the strongest commoners, and both suffer in their unique ways. Byleth has been insulated from the consequences of both presentations with her nature, but alphas have ugly, difficult existences as well. Dimitri already could not contain his rage and pain; what would having a rut drive done to him, especially given how much rarer stable alpha packs are to build and find?

At some later date, Byleth will have to reexamine every interaction she has ever had with Dimitri with that information in mind. For now, she will return the honesty he’s shown her.

Another breath, a long exhale. “Well, it’s different for me. I… I can choose, and if I wanted to choose differently, I could. Both magics reside within me, so neither presents the way you know them to present.”

Byleth watches Dimitri work through this explanation. She sees some doubts smooth away, and others rise in their place. “I do not understand,” he admits, the words halting but not angry. “You have never had a heat, to my knowledge, but I suppose you never rutted, either, and yet my nose swears to me this is the scent of my—of an alpha.”

“I didn’t know either, for a long time,” Byleth says. “My initial presentation was so different from the alphas and omegas I’d known that I didn’t realize it had happened. It was both, and neither, the drives and cycles syncing to cancel each other out. Even before I came to Garreg Mach, I was more drawn to omegas. But that’s my preference, not my presentation.”

She holds her breath. They’d discussed this before, but despite the possessiveness she’s seen from him, Dimitri seems unfazed by the implication of past lovers. Instead, his brows knit as he thinks. A good sign. “Is this why each of us find your scent so different?”

“I don’t know, but I assume so,” Byleth replies. Her finger draws up and down over her abdomen as she waits for him to say more.

“Extraordinary,” Dimitri murmurs, a note of wonder in his voice. “But then, did I not watch you cut through darkness itself to return to this realm? Perhaps you truly were sleeping these past five years.”

Byleth gulps. _That_ is more what she expected. “In a sense,” she says tightly.

Dimitri’s eye fixes upon her. “That is what you told me, was it not?” His voice is acrid and his scent follows. “That you were sleeping.”

“I was,” Byleth protests, too quickly. “I fell and I had injuries. My body needed to heal.”

Too late. He’d caught something, and now he charges forward without heeding the consequences. _Boar prince._ “You are hiding something. Tell me, what sort of injury takes five years to heal? Where did you convalesce? Who cared for you during that time?” The questions fire fast and sharp as smoke rises in his scent.

She can’t. _She can’t._ The answers are too big for him. The answers are too big for _Byleth._

“Answer me!”

Maybe she should just show him. Her pound of flesh. He won’t take it well, but what good has sheltering him ever done, right?

With shaky legs and bitten lips, Byleth stands. Her hands tremble as she slowly lifts her shirt.

“Professor, I am not so easily distracted as Sylv— _by Seiros!_ ”

Byleth winces as she looks down at what Dimitri’s seeing. In the space between her ribs and her navel is an enormous silver-jade wound, glowing even in the weak moonlight.

She vaguely remembers the hours in the darkness, her only light source the divine relic upon which she’d been inadvertently impaled. Praying for someone to come as she grew numb and cold from the pain and blood loss. Giving up, deciding to pull herself off the blade and let go, when she’d heard a stern, childish voice that had been absent since she’d been trapped in another void. _“Hmph. Giving up so easily? Leaving your little ones behind? Rest now, and I shall keep my eye upon them as you mend.”_

So Byleth slept, and dreamed of battlefields new and ancient; of summer blue in Conand Bay and mad honey from Fódlan’s Throat; of seeing her students again, tall and proud and strong beside her. She dreamed, and she dreamed, until the voice came again and called her home.

“I was hit by a spell and fell into the ravine. I’ve always healed quickly and without scars,” Byleth says, “but falling on my sword… was different.”

It’s rare to catch pure sadness from Dimitri’s scent; even when he told her about Duscur, she could smell the smoke and rot. There are hints now of those, but they’re overpowered by the _ash-salt-blood,_ spun with his mad honey into pure grief.

Then the smoke and rot return, and he ekes out choking, bitter noises as he puts his hands to his face. Byleth can’t tell if he is laughing or crying. Maybe Dimitri can’t tell either.

“Oh goddess,” he manages through wheezes, “what a fool I have been, to permit myself to believe you real. Were you not content with consuming my dreams? Must you haunt my waking moments as well, spirit?”

“Dimitri—” Byleth bites off with a frustrated groan. This is exactly what she was afraid would happen. “I’m alive. I’m here.”

His body shakes, curling into himself like a hedgehog as death suffuses the air. “Vile, disgusting monster,” he sobs, each word piercing her heart. “Worthless, pathetic animal! How stupid am I, to not see through this trick? That they would never stop mocking me for my weakness? My shame? I know I have failed you, _I know,_ but please, forgive me. I swear I will bring you _that woman’s_ head as soon as my miserable husk permits me to leave this place!”

“Dimitri.” Byleth walks to his side and sits down. He keens brokenly, but she’s wary of touching him in this state. “You’ve seen the Blue Lions speak with me and touch me,” Byleth reminds him gently. “You have my coat, with my scent, right?”

Wracked with his sobbing, he chokes out between fits, “That does not mean you are here now—that I did not simply _dream_ you—oh Goddess, oh Goddess—how could I be so _deluded_ to believe _you_ would reach your hand out to a bloodstained wretch as I, after I let them take—after I let them _defile—_ “

Byleth freezes.

_No._

She has no heartbeat to stop, but the blood pulsing in her veins is still a thick, viscous, toxic sludge pushing into every corner of her body. “Dimitri,” Byleth says with a calm she will never feel again, “who are they, and what did they take?”

“I’m sorry,” he whimpers. “I was weak and everything _hurt_ I _hurt_ and I let them take I let them _take—_ ”

_Blood-slick-ROT-FILTH-STOP._

“Fhirdiad,” Byleth whispers, because she _knew._ His very first heat was in his cell in Fhirdiad, because no one wastes silphium on prisoners, much less sadists like Cornelia, and prison guard was one of the few honest livings a male alpha could make. No one would raise an eyebrow. Even with his lofty title, in that moment Dimitri would have been nothing but a feral omega, condemned to die. No one would _care_ what a few alpha prison guards stole on his way to the gallows. 

Eye wet and cloudy, Dimitri nods feebly even as he refuses to meet her gaze. “I was chained, and there were wards,” he whimpers, as if trying to defend himself. “It was so warm, I was tired, I was _burning_ and the guards—they took what was—what was—it hurt and I was too weak too disgusting too pathetic to stop them at first but I broke my chains I broke my chains and _I painted my cell with their blood_.”

His late jailers should be grateful they’re already dead, because whatever retribution Dimitri visited upon them, Byleth’s would be worse. She doesn’t do torture. She doesn’t do suffering.

For them, Byleth could do _agony._

 _Stop._ With a wrenching sigh, she tears her thoughts from that dark, pointless path. They were dead, and Dimitri was alive, sobbing apologies for a crime he never committed, and Byleth can offer no absolution. His breathing is puddle-shallow and lightning-quick when he manages it through his tears, and he’s digging his fingers into his arms in a way sure to leave deep bruises. She needs a way to prove to him she’s here, to break him out of this loop.

Byleth looks out towards the balcony and remembers another time in this tower, and a plan forms. Clearing her throat, she begins to sing.

“In time’s flow…see the glow of flames ever burning bright…”

His weeping continues unabated, but Byleth sees his back tense and his position shift as she sings. Dimitri is listening. Taking a deeper breath, she continues, “On the swift river's drift, broken memories alight…”

As Byleth sings, Dimitri’s tears slow. He stares at her in confused wonder, brow furrowing as he tries to recall. As she finishes, he shakes his head. “I… where is that from? I can’t recall…”

Byleth suppresses her triumph. Dimitri has never had much of an ear for music, but he can’t remember a song he’s never heard. Sothis’s song never appeared in the choral hymnal rotation, nor was it ever sung by a bard to Byleth’s (rather extensive) knowledge. Byleth suspects Rhea kept the song to herself, and based on the dawning non-comprehension on Dimitri’s face, she guessed right.

There’s still more of that horrible memory-scent in the air, but it’s slowly fading, the warmth of his bittersweet mad honey returning. “Is it really you?” Dimitri whispers, awestruck. “You’re truly here?”

“I am.” She smiles at him weakly. “Sorry I took so long getting back.”

He shakes his head, hiccuping. “No. I am not so churlish as to demand my miracles adhere to a schedule.”

That wins a misty chuckle from Byleth. “I’d like to help you back to your nest,” she says. “You’ll rest better there.”

Dimitri gives her a tiny nod, and Byleth offers him her hand. He accepts it, staring at her small, unblemished hand in his larger, scarred one.

It’s slower going than she expects; he’s worn himself out emotionally and leans on her heavily. As he settles into the furs of his nest, he starts to relax, until Byleth begins to withdraw. Instantly the tension and anxiety return, his scent spiraling again into panic.

With a soft sigh, Byleth lays down behind Dimitri, throwing an arm over his chest. Dimitri clasps his trembling hand over hers, practically engulfing it with his palm. Eventually, his breathing returns to something approaching human, though he’s still too tense to be asleep.

“Dimitri.” Byleth considers her next words carefully. “I wanted to say—”

He squeezes her hand to cut her off, his entire body a study in defeat. “I know what you intend to say, Professor. That it was not my fault, that what they took was not theirs to take. I have heard those words before.”

Heard the words, perhaps, but not listened to them; he certainly didn’t believe them. Still, Byleth is glad someone tried. “That wasn’t all I was going to say.”

“Oh?” His voice, his very being, seems to dangle from that word.

“I was going to say,” Byleth says, “that after everything, it must be a relief to stop pretending you’re okay. To let yourself be angry.”

Dimitri stills in her arms. For a moment Byleth worries she’s upset him more, but slowly he unwinds, relaxing more than she’s seen since he returned. “Y-yes,” he whispers in the dark. “Yes it was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worldbuilding Notes:
> 
>   * Before anyone asks: Edelgard does not know what happened. Neither does Hubert. Whether they should have known is a question outside the boundaries of this particular story. The question may be revisited in a future story, as Edelgard has been changed by this universe as well. In this house we stan nuanced takes on complex villains.
>   * Feel free to hate on Cornelia, though. Some women really do just want to watch the world burn.
>   * Props to all y’all who figured out Byleth’s presentation in advance. All my love to the critical readers out there!
> 

> 
> Additional Notes:
> 
>   * I made myself two promises when I set down to write this and the second one was “none of this ‘the omega getting raped’ shit.” I tried _really hard_ to find a way around it, but it was one of those “the characters speaking to me” things. I was experimenting with far-future shenanigans in this universe and realized despite my “best efforts,” Byleth and Dimitri were conducting their behavior as if he were a rape survivor, and I just had to own it. Besides, the reality of stuff like this is that it’s not about being “strong” enough to escape. Power and abuse come in many forms, and at a certain point trying to avoid what the worldbuilding and characters are all pointing towards almost in of itself becomes disrespectful. Hopefully all of you feel I handled this with grace here, and I will do my level best to continue doing so as we move forward.
>   * On a _slightly_ lighter note, we'll revisit the implications of Byleth's wound eventually, but for now, this headcanon came from me asking myself "How the fuck did Byleth hold on to the Sword of the Creator even after getting washed down a river?" and then jokingly thinking of [this](https://imgflip.com/i/3u6fi8) and then inexplicably deciding to run for the hills with this idea.
> 

> 
> Your hits, comments, and kudos remain the lifeblood of this fic. Bless you all for sticking with this behemoth.


	9. nine (heat day 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How much longer until she breaks every last promise she’d made to him, to the Blue Lions, to herself?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings.** Possessive behavior, bad kink etiquette. But that's basically this entire story.
> 
> Y'all continue to feed me with your love, kudos, and support. We're finally getting somewhere in the general vicinity of The Good Shit.

They need more water. Both of them drank more than they estimated yesterday. That’s easy to do. Byleth unwinds herself from Dimitri, who moans in protest. Dimitri has fallen into some state with a passing resemblance to sleep. She watches his mouth form silent pleas to whomever tortures him today.

Not her priority. Water is her priority.

Water, and fresh air.

So Byleth walks down the tower steps and pays no notice to the churn of her stomach or the acid in her throat. The moment she throws the door open and breathes, she tosses everything aside, drops to her hands and knees, and vomits up everything in her stomach.

“Professor?!”

Byleth sighs. Too much to hope that no one would see that. She could have used a moment to sort through her thoughts.

Ashe has a hand on her shoulder as Felix grabs her waist and pulls her back to a standing position. Byleth wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, feeling the tremble against her lips.

She knew. She knew the moment she heard Sylvain’s arm crack into pieces. In all his rage and bloodlust, there was one line Dimitri _never_ crossed until Sylvain tried to embrace him, and has not stepped over since. She’d even caught the heavy, almost oily scent of Dimitri’s guilt as he realized who he’d hurt. He’d been acting on bone-deep terror, a demon with a different but no less cruel set of hooks in Dimitri’s flesh from that of his ghosts. Small wonder Marianne wouldn’t go near the cathedral when Dimitri was haunting it.

 _Damn it._ Hasn’t he been through enough in this life?

“Are you all right, Professor?” Ashe asks as they walk her over to the well. Byleth plants both hands on the well’s lip and tries not to retch again.

“It’s nothing,” Byleth says, the lie springing to her lips before she recalls her company. “Some of Dimitri’s food had gone off.”

Felix leans against the well, arms crossed and expression grim. “What did the boar do?”

Byleth does not have the patience for Felix right now. Snapping her head towards his, she growls, “It was _not_ his fault.”

She takes little pleasure in the tilt of his chin as Felix struggles not to bare his throat at her. After a brief sniff of the air, he gives up the fight. He’s deemed her honest.

“I picked up the things you dropped, Professor,” Ashe says with a shaky smile. “Let me help you refill these waterskins. Oh, and I brought breakfast! I made trout sandwiches for you and pheasant stock for Dimitri. It’s my favorite food during heats, nice and rich, but not too heavy to make me ill.”

Byleth sighs tiredly, scooping up some of the well water to rinse her mouth. After she spits it onto the ground, she murmurs, “Thanks, Ashe.”

“Of course, Professor.” Ashe smiles at her over the well. There’s something calming about it Byleth appreciates. He’s grown into one of her steadiest Lions and she’s so proud of him for it.

“How is the boar?” Felix asks, his arms tightening over his chest.

“Fine,” Byleth says, too tired to argue.

Felix doesn’t need his nose to know she’s lying. “You smell like him.”

Byleth counts to ten before replying. “He’s been in heat for the past day.”

When Felix’s eyebrows rise, Byleth pulls herself to her full height, standing with all the command bestowed on her by the Crest of Flames. Felix scowls and turns away from her before he submits again, hopping up onto the well to sit.

She turns back to Ashe, who has been dutifully refilling the waterskins and tying them together for transport. “Everyone knows you’re doing the best you can, Professor,” Ashe says with a hopeful smile that does not meet his eyes. “Let me know if His Highness likes the stock? I can make more.”

_He won’t know if he likes it._

Byleth draws a shuddering breath and turns back to Felix and Ashe. “You can stop taking silphium,” she says, because there is no protecting anyone in this world, so the least Byleth can do is let her Lions choose their poison. “Or don’t. I don’t care. Tell the others.”

His eyes break away, something raw flickering across his gaze. “Professor,” he murmurs, a hundred questions buried in the word. Then, thinking better of it, finishes with, “Be careful.”

_Too late._

* * *

Byleth hadn’t meant to stay long at the well, but Ashe and Felix added crucial minutes to her errand. She catches the first charred-corpse warning note at the base of the steps, sharp as a siege weapon in her nostrils.

Byleth shoves down another wave of nausea. While she was gone, Dimitri curled up into a tight ball. Turned away from her, she can see his ravaged back shaking in time with the broken noises escaping his body. “Dimitri?”

No reaction. Setting down the water, she walks up to his nest. “Dimitri, please look at me.”

He stops with a wet, choked gasp. Swallowing, Byleth places her hand on his shoulder.

Dimitri whirls around too quickly for him to have been asleep, staring at her as if she were a ghost. Tear tracks gleam in the dawn light. “You’re still here.” His voice is a raw, soggy thing.

“I went to get fresh water. Were you having a bad dream?”

“Ah—yes,” he replies, latching onto the lie. “You know I don’t—”

“Sleep well,” she finishes for him. “Have you had anything today?”

“Must I remind you again that this is not my—” Dimitri cuts himself off, sinking back down into his nest. The pain is already receding, the honey back in full season. “No. No, I have not.”

“Okay.” She turns to pick up the pheasant stock Ashe prepared, but Dimitri catches her wrist in his hand. The grip is firm but not painful. He tugs her back, forcing Byleth to face him. His rosy mouth is a sharp, hard line as he drags himself to a standing position. “Why do you smell like another omega?”

Byleth shakes her wrist. He loosens his grip but does not let go. She points to the stock. “Ashe made us both breakfast.”

He sniffs the air, standing up shakily to get closer. “That’s not just Ashe.”

“Felix was there too.”

“Why?” A rasp against abraded skin.

The omegas always wait, but Byleth doesn’t know the mechanics of that, so she shrugs in response. “He’s your Shield, isn’t he?”

She thinks Dimitri satisfied with that explanation until the burning honey hits her nostrils. Before she can react, he pulls her close.

Byleth stumbles into the planes of his chest, her body slotting against his as Dimitri steadies her. His body blazes hotter than a kitchen hearth and his chest shimmers with sweat. She feels the press of his hard cock against her. Her breath hitches as he slides along her thigh. Dimitri arcs into her, making sure no part of Byleth is not marked by his scent.

How _large_ he’s become. Dimitri was always tall, but rangy, still half-formed. Now he’s heavy muscle and sharp bone, strength crystallized into tangible form and engulfing her. There’s the blood-and-mad-honey scent of him chanting away away _away_ in the back of her head. He could crush the life from her with a careless gesture. (Not that it would stick for long.)

He won’t, though. That’s what excites her the most.

Byleth’s blood sings take take _take_. Lust orbits like a cruel halo.

Dimitri moves against her, slow and sinuous. The brush of him against her overheating body pulls a shocked gasp from her throat. She swallows, trying to clear the mad honey from her senses. He’s _scenting_ her, wiping away any traces of their scents by covering her with his own. How predictably feral of him. How predictably asinine of Byleth to find it charming instead of disturbing.

Still Dimitri misunderstands how things work between them. Instincts new and ancient roar to life, and Byleth’s hand moves of its own volition. Gripping his hair like a lead, she yanks his head with a firm tug. “What are you doing?”

The transformation is swift and shocking. With a high whine, his eye slams shut and his body goes slack, forcing Byleth to keep a firm grip to steadily lower him back into the nest. His moans are broken by soft, breathy gasps. As he falls to his knees, he shivers, full-body, and his eye reopens, staring up at her in hazy fury and want as he bares his neck for her.

Byleth’s grip tightens. She leans close to Dimitri’s ear. His lungs hitch with each word. “I asked you a question.”

He shudders as she speaks, his mouth falling open as he struggles to keep his eye upon her. “Please,” he whispers, but the pleas dripping from his lips and the bruises he presses into his thighs are not answers.

“Answer me.”

“You’re here,” he says. He’s dazed and longing and it’s the saddest thing Byleth has ever heard. “You’re here. You’re _here_.”

Sighing, she leans down to meet his gaze. Byleth strokes his cheek with her thumb, careful and sweet. He leans into her touch, and licks his lips in a mirror of hers. Breathing so close that his next breath first belonged to her, she murmurs, “You need to talk to me.”

He’s flushed and bright before her, lips parted as he mouths the side of her palm. His moan is tiny, a thread of pure need. Energy sparks where his mouth touches her and Byleth’s next breath is pure electricity, crackling in her lungs. It would be so easy to stop pushing and start pulling him closer. Let their mouths complete the circuit, strike them both like lightning.

After a few quick shocks of breath, Dimitri digs his fingers into his thighs bruise-hard and his gaze snaps back, clear and lucid. “You returned to my nest with another omega’s scent on you,” he says through gritted teeth. The anger’s risen again, smoke to her ice, even as he shivers wantonly. “What did you expect?”

What _did_ Byleth expect?

When did this stop being about keeping her promise?

Was this ever about keeping a promise?

How much longer until she breaks every last promise she’d made to him, to the Blue Lions, to herself?

Yet even if Byleth leaves now, there’s no going back. Byleth buried her memories of the sweet, eager prince deep as her mother’s bones to survive the stranger wearing his face. Now she knows what _this_ Dimitri looks like lust-slack and honey-sweet before her, and she will have that memory carved onto her eyelids next time he screams about the salvation of the dead.

Byleth drops him. Dimitri scrambles back into his nest, refusing to meet her gaze.

“I shouldn’t have touched you that way,” Byleth says. “I’m sorry.”

Dimitri folds his knees against his chest, eye fixed away from her. “No,” he whispers, voice breaking. “You shouldn’t have.”

* * *

Dimitri has stopped pretending he does not watch her. His eye is wide and luminous as Byleth reviews old battle tactics and chess games in her head to ward off boredom. Boredom, and temptation, as the mad honey seeps not only into her nose but every pore of her body. The bloom of his scent is deeper, richer than before, and his mouth blossoms in silent prayer. Soft moans and whimpers drop from his lips as morning dew from petals. He shivers uncontrollably despite lying beneath his cloak and hers. His breath is light and needle-sharp, as if stabbing at his lungs in fits.

Byleth gives up on distracting herself. “Are you o—can you tell me what you’re feeling?”

Slowly he shakes his head in response.

“Is it that you don’t know, or that you’re uncomfortable telling me?”

He folds into himself, burrowing into his cloak further. “Do not waste your energy on me.” He tries to growl at her, but it sounds more like a whine.

Byleth tries again. “Are you upset that I pulled your hair?”

“Am I?” He sounds…curious? As if he’s genuinely unable to tell.

She can no longer ignore his personality changes. Each hour he is less himself, the self she has known these past hard months, than he was the hour before. As a child, Byleth once watched a butterfly’s chrysalis gradually turn clear, revealing the fragile, beautiful creature hiding beneath the hard shell. What gradually appears from this shell is a new Dimitri, familiar in some beats, new in others, and Byleth doesn’t quite know who or what will emerge on the other side.

His pained cry interrupts her thoughts. His eye squeezes shut, tension etched in every line of his face. “If you need privacy, I could step outside—” the honey practically chokes her, “—or to the balcony.”

Dimitri chuckles, hoarse and broken. “Wasted effort. This moment always comes.”

Dorothea told Byleth of heat games, but what Byleth learned from Dorothea’s heat is that a moment always comes when the games stop. When there is no relief. Eventually, the flames inside cannot be cooled without an alpha’s words and an alpha’s touch.

What Dimitri does not say, but Byleth hears, is _but not this soon._ Likely escalated by her presence.

Byleth’s stomach sinks slowly, like lowering herself into a bathtub deep enough to drown. She is captive here too, held by the push of his words and the pull of his scent.

 _You can ease his suffering_. A dark, quiet murmur, teeth at her ear. _He needs you._

Byleth swallows and tries to block out Dimitri’s sharp, shivering breath.

_He’s yours for the taking._

Byleth bites down on her lip as her nails press into her palms.

_Take what’s yours._

Byleth stands.

Each step is identical in length and pace, an exercise in discipline. When she reaches his nest, she kneels down beside it. Now that she is close, Dimitri turns his gaze away from her. “I would like to try something, with your permission.”

“Do what you wish with me.” It’s hollow, listless.

So Byleth begins stroking his damp hair, slow and gentle. Dimitri flinches at the touch and gasps, wet and sharp, but gentles moments later. Every part of his body reorients itself to maximize its contact with Byleth’s palm, his throat fully bared.

Now that she’s established she has the abilities of an alpha, she should be able to concentrate and spike her scent output to soothe him. She’s seen—and smelled—Sylvain do it often enough when flirting or weaseling out of trouble. How it works is still somewhat of a mystery to her.

Like with her manifestation, Byleth decides intention is the best place to begin. She skims through her memories for a moment he seemed comfortable with her.

* * *

_“Forgive me, I am not good with facial expressions. Is my smile passable at present?”_

_What a weird question._

_Byleth studied Dimitri’s face. He had a handsome smile, confident and strong. Command and charm. Prince Charming’s smile._

_She didn’t care for it. He angled his lips to hide his too-long canines and the snaggletooth in his lower teeth. His dimples barely showed. A cracking, contorted pull at a mouth._

_“Professor?” The false smile slipped._

_Byleth dropped a dollop of honey in her chamomile tea. “Why does it matter?”_

_He wilted: head drooping, shoulders slumping, mouth pouting. Byleth did not like seeing him unhappy, but she preferred the honesty of his present expression. “I am honored each time you ask me to tea,” Dimitri said, “and I do not wish for you to believe I am not enjoying your company.”_

_“Are you?”_

_“Of course!” Dimitri’s eyes sparked, a bit wild. His cheeks were ruddy._

_“Okay.”_

_“But I—” Dimitri reached out his hand as if to grasp whatever point he was making, but the point slipped away and he dropped back, defeated by himself._

_She disliked it whenever Dimitri cut away his own passion. His intensity fascinated her, and she wanted to see it redirected productively, not snuffed out like a candle. So Byleth tried again. “People judge me for my blank face and lack of scent. You’ve always trusted me, and heard me out when we’ve disagreed. I appreciate that.”_

_Dimitri glanced away. Guilt, most likely, from private doubts. Byleth didn’t care. His actions were what mattered. “You are not easy to read, I admit, and your forthright speech took some adjustment. Yet you have proven you care deeply for us through your teaching and your conduct in battle, and I have come to find your candidness refreshing. It is… unusual to find people who treat me both with thoughtfulness and irreverence.”_

_Byleth felt her cheeks warm. He found her caring? He thought her blunt speech refreshing? How… unusual. “Then let me return the favor. You don’t have to care about your smile when it’s just us.”_

_“Professor, there is no need—”_

_Byleth stopped him with a hand. “I_ want _you to feel you can relax with me. Would you deny me that joy?”_

_At first he was shocked, open-mouthed in confusion as he processed what Byleth had asked. Byleth’s phrasing pitted Dimitri’s desire to be pleasing against his need to please, which was unusually strong for an alpha (was he?). She was curious to see which would win._

_Then Dimitri did something unexpected: he_ giggled _, small and delightful. When she looked at him, his smile was small and shy, but it revealed his deep dimples better, and his eyes twinkled like the Blue Sea Star. His shoulders settled naturally, somewhere between his typical ruler-sharp posture and the sad slump from before. It was more open, more vulnerable, yet more compelling, more disarming. “You never cease to surprise me, Professor.”_

_This smile would inspire armies to war. She cared for this smile perhaps too much._

_Huh. Did she leave the honey jar open after using it?_

* * *

Five years gone and Dimitri’s body still softens the way it did whenever they had tea together. It hurts to see him in such a familiar and specific way when she’s spent the past three months grieving the loss.

Dimitri’s breathing slows some, but the lines of his face are too tight. What did Dorothea tell her about the endurance games? Focus on something else?

“Would you tell me a story?” Byleth asks eventually.

Dimitri’s eye slits open, the pupil blown so wide it nearly swallows the blue of his eye. “Ask a bard.”

She screeches in laughter. It’s too perfect. It’s the most perfect answer to a question that has ever existed, and _Dimitri,_ of all people, came up with it. Byleth cackles, loud and long, her smile ear-to-ear. He looks absurdly proud of himself, even through the heat pain, and Byleth can’t be mad, because Dimitri will never top this moment. This is it. This is his comedy pinnacle.

“Okay, smart guy,” Byleth says once she recovers, “good one. Now tell me a story.”

Dimitri’s proud smirk drops, and he scowls at Byleth. “If you wanted a house leader who tells stories, you should have chosen Claude.” His eye shuts again tightly. “Perhaps you should have chosen him anyway.”

The tension in his body has redoubled, even after her laughter relaxed him. Damn. It was working so well, too. Byleth spikes her scent again. “I don’t want Claude to tell me a story. I want you to do it.”

Byleth waits. The strain of his heat makes the bitter notes of his natural scent strong on her tongue. They, like the flowering sweetness of the honey, deserve to be savored.

He grumbles. “Very well.”

She watches the movement of his eye beneath his eyelid, the press and drag of his mouth as he thinks. “A crane and a heron once lived in a bog,” he begins. “The crane was tired of being alone, so he decided he would ask the heron to marry him…”

Dimitri is not a natural storyteller. His voice is too harsh and his speech patterns too formal for a folk tale. When the pain of his heat doesn’t disrupt the story’s flow, it’s Dimitri interrupting himself to interject some detail he missed. Still, he unwinds slowly as he tells her about a crane and a heron who keep refusing one another’s marriage proposals, and even ekes a laugh out of her. When he’s finished, he’s resting almost comfortably, sunk into his nest.

“Where’d you hear that?” Byleth asks him.

His eye half-opens, and a rueful half-smile graces his lips. “One of the street omegas who helped me would sometimes tell me stories when I couldn’t sleep.”

Byleth half-smiles in turn. “That was kind of her.”

“Maren was a kind woman. They all were, in their different ways.” Dimitri shivers beneath the cloak. “Their ghosts visit me close to my heats. They order me to prepare myself as they taught me. It wasn’t… easy, convincing my family to lessen their demands during heats. They burn in the Eternal Flame as I lie here. Yet even Father and Glenn learned to tolerate that I cannot hope to face _that woman_ in this pathetic state.”

Only Dimitri could be in a deep heat and _still_ feel guilty about not fulfilling his long-dead family’s demands for vengeance. Never mind that even if he could stand long enough to challenge her, his heat would render him helpless against Edelgard’s alpha scent and near-hypnotic command over others.

Turning towards Byleth, Dimitri asks in a conspiratorial whisper, “Is it wrong that I’ve come to crave the respite? Even with the pain and weakness, Maren, Rafe, Quinn, Sylvie, the others… they are gentle when they remind me of my duty to bring them _that woman’s_ head. They keep the rage of my family, my friends, away for a time. Such weakness I show… it shames me.”

Forced the dead to the negotiating table, then. Byleth had wondered how his fractured mind reckoned with the heats. She turns to the nest, the carefully-stored furs, the crude but dedicated stitching, the stacks of supplies. The monument to the dead that preserved his life.

“It sounds to me,” Byleth says gently, brushing a damp lock of hair off his forehead, “that you’re already honoring their deaths by building this nest. When I first saw it, it reminded me of a shrine.”

Dimitri eyes her skeptically. “Hmph. Do the dead speak with you now? There is no rest for the dead but vengeance upon those who have slain them.” The force and cruelty Dimitri usually brings to those words have drained away, however, leaving him tired and sad. He stares at the nest thoughtfully, as if seeing it in a new light.

“You said they wish for you to survive,” Byleth reminds him, “and you’ve done that. You’ve done so well, Dimitri. You’re a good, loyal omega, to think of them and honor them even in your heats.”

Simple words, but they undo all her work. He trembles under her palm. A soft whine tears from his throat. His hands fist into the pelts beneath him as his hips buck, and a bead of sweat follows the bared line of his neck. “M-may I,” he babbles, unable to meet her gaze. “Professor, _please_ , may I, may I _please_ —”

Byleth has no idea what Dimitri wants, but she knows what she wants.

Byleth wants to sink her teeth into that perfectly bared throat. She wants to rake her nails over his scarred skin and leave marks of her own. She wants to sit on his face and force him to lick the juices running from her throbbing cunt until they’re both hoarse from screaming.

She wants to turn him over and fuck him. Knot him, mate him.

She wants to—

—no, some thoughts are too dangerous to even give voice.

 _Take what’s yours_.

What Byleth says is: “Go ahead.”

Dimitri flings away his cloak as his hands grasp his leaking cock. One hand pumps in a vicious grip while the other dips into the puddle of slick spilling beneath him and over his thighs. Then his fingers disappear inside himself, only to emerge again as he begins to furiously fuck his hole. He sets a grueling pace for himself, his brute strength collapsed inward to wring relief from the wildfires burning in his blood. Tears flow from his eye as freely as fluid from his leaking cock. His lips part with incoherent pleas.

He is a mindless beast now, though blood is not what he craves. She should feel pity he’s been reduced to such a wretched state.

Instead she _wants_.

 _Fuck knot mate ~~claim~~._ The cruel mantra hammers in her brain as her lust coils in response to what he is, what she damned him to with faint praise. Her body want want _wants_. She can feel the magic coalescing between her legs, ready to flip him over and sink inside.

_Take what’s yours._

Byleth does not listen to that voice.

Still her hand slips from his hair down to his mouth, and her thumb traces the curve of his lips. He moans wantonly; the heat has rendered his mouth sensitive and eager for stimulation. “So beautiful,” Byleth whispers, and his keening is almost as sweet as his mad-honey scent.

“May I, Professor,” Dimitri chokes out between cries, “Professor, Professor, may I may I may I _please please_ may I please—”

Byleth knows what he wants now. One word, and she can release him.

Instead she inches her thumb into his parted lips, and he takes her in, sucking her thumb devotedly even as his needy whines vibrate over her skin. Byleth smiles as his tongue laves at her. She hopes he can smell her approval.

His eye fixes on her. Adoring. Reverent. Worshipful.

She waits.

Every bit of him is a sobbing mess, tears and saliva, leaking and slick. His body shakes so badly he’s practically seizing.

She waits.

And there, even as he’s tearing himself apart for her, is the scent of chamomile. She knows now what chamomile means.

Trust.

“Now,” Byleth whispers, and he comes apart for her, thick ropes of cum across his stomach as his eye rolls back and his lips suck and his hands tremble and his legs shake and his cock thrusts and his body convulses as the pleasure of submitting to her orders ricochets through every part of him.

Then he collapses back, exhausted.

Byleth waits a moment more. When she slides her thumb from his mouth he tries to suck it back in, to keep her within him.

She gets a clean rag from his stockpile and wets it. He jerks involuntarily when the cool water wipes away his spend, but settles quickly. He’s exhausted from the pain and the intensity of the moment. As much as she’d like him to drink something, he’s already falling asleep.

After a moment to admire his peaceful expression, Byleth goes to the balcony and the magic manifests before she even has a chance to think it into existence. She takes herself in hand with almost grim brutality, snarling and growling with each rising lust. Under her shorts she can feel her cunt slick and furious with her for continuing to deny herself the inevitable.

When she comes, she thinks _close now_.

The magic dissipates and Byleth starts. That voice was not the hot drumbeat of her lust, the thing rising in her demanding she _fuck knot mate ~~claim~~_.

That voice is her tactician. Her chess player. Her Ashen Demon, who is quiet and cold… and very, very patient.

_The fox guarding the rabbit._

That, Byleth realizes, is the voice that has been guiding her from the moment she first stepped inside the Goddess Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: somehow they _still_ don't fuck.


	10. ten (interlude: don't search me in here, i'm already gone baby)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She can no longer keep her promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings**. Not many, for once, beyond the usual ongoing warnings of dubious consent and discussion of prior rape/non-consensual sex. A teacher definitely not acting in an ethical manner towards her student(s).
> 
> Certain elements in this chapter might be enhanced by reading the deleted scenes from chapter 6, which I've started adding to [a collection here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474986/chapters/56281126).
> 
> Title from Charli XCX and Christine and the Queens' [Gone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chSZCtLrgz8) and could be alternately titled "i feel so unstable fucking hate these people."
> 
> I am behind on comments but I will respond to all of them because holy shit I have the most bomb commentators out there.

**WYVERN MOON 1180**

Byleth caught the smell of ozone and dying flowers before she heard the sobbing. She searched the cathedral, sensing something was horribly wrong.

Dorothea was curled up in a tiny ball behind Saint Cethleann’s statue, frame shaking as she struggled to breathe through her panic and tears. The kohl lining her eyes and lashes had run, and her face was puffy.

“Dorothea,” Byleth murmured, leaning down to her eye level, “focus on your breathing. Deep, slow breaths. You’re an opera singer, right? I know you can do that for me.”

It worked after a few more minutes of Byleth quietly murmuring reassurances to her. Dorothea hugged Byleth tightly, and Byleth rubbed soothing circles on her back. Byleth silently thanked Dedue for teaching her how to handle panic episodes. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Dorothea pulled back to wipe her eyes. Byleth had never seen her so distraught. “My heat’s coming.”

“Okay,” Byleth said. “Can you tell me more?”

With a sniff, she nodded. “Do you know how they handle heats here, Professor? It’s barbaric. They lock you in a room for a week and chain you to a bed, and the only people allowed in are servants for a few hours a day. I can’t do it, Professor. I can’t.”

Byleth remembered that from the campus tour Seteth gave her. The rooms were lavishly appointed, but the process sounded nothing like what Byleth had heard before. According to Seteth, this was the standard procedure among the nobility for unclaimed omegas and alphas whose scents spiked too high to safely restrain in their own chambers.

According to Seteth’s face during that part of the tour, he found it as barbaric as Dorothea and Byleth did. Byleth was surprised he hadn’t been more understanding. “Did you explain your rituals to Seteth? About your old pack and their covenants?”

Dorothea’s eyes glittered. “I tried to explain, I did. Manuela was trying to get permission to sit with me, but after the Death Knight’s attack, she’s on bed rest. But the words just—they refused to make an exception. Seteth was nice about it, but… I’ll die before I walk into that room, Professor. I mean it.”

The look in Dorothea’s eyes chilled Byleth’s blood. Whoever or whatever put that look there, Byleth longed to strangle it slowly with the Sword of the Creator.

She ran through their options. Most of the nearby inns had no heat-safe rooms because Garreg Mach had rooms available for free to traveling omegas. The outdoors had too many variables and not enough time to prepare. That left Dorothea’s chambers, which would be an improvement from the heat chamber, but left her alone inside and at risk of a rutting alpha breaking down her door. She needed someone who wasn’t an alpha not just to sit with her, but to protect her if the worst happened.

“I’ll stay with you.”

Dorothea stared up at her with her big, wet eyes, a spark of hope lightening her scent. “But they won’t give you permission.”

Byleth’s empty expression hardened. “Then we won’t ask.”

* * *

Rolling the wine barrel back to Dorothea’s room from the dining hall would be the hardest part of their preparations. They’d been quietly stashing supplies in Dorothea’s quarters for a week now, but stealing the wine barrel from the pantry was their most audacious move yet. “We could still go to the merchants,” Byleth reminded her.

Dorothea’s laugh rang like tinkling bells. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Professor? It’s not a proper street heat unless you steal your wine.”

Byleth didn’t know if that was true, but it seemed true enough for Dorothea. If this is what she needed to feel ready, then they would handle the consequences once this was over.

Their timing worked out well. Officially Dorothea was supposed to report to the heat chambers morning after next, using a mix of heavy-scented soaps and her own tricks to conceal the strength of her scent. The Golden Deer were assigned to help the Knights of Seiros search for the Death Knight and weren’t scheduled to return for two days. Edelgard took the Black Eagles into the forest for training ahead of the Battle of the Eagle and Lion. Dorothea begged off, citing her coming heat. The night was chilly enough to drive even the Blue Lions indoors.

All, of course, except the biggest Lion on the block, who was knocking on Byleth’s door while she and Dorothea rolled a stolen wine barrel into Dorothea’s dorm. Dorothea cursed under her breath and Dimitri turned towards the sound, his mouth falling open in shock.

“Professor Eisner… ? Dorothea… ?”

“Damn it.” Dorothea elbowed Byleth. “Professor, Dimitri’s an alpha and my heat is close enough to start a rut. Get rid of him, please!” Before Byleth could reply, the door slammed behind her, leaving Byleth and the wine barrel outside.

“Professor.” Dimitri blinked in confusion at Dorothea’s closed door. “What is the meaning of this?”

Byleth considered using a Divine Pulse, but there was no way to know when Dimitri would leave and who might show up instead. Further, their discovery was inevitable; the plan was to buy enough time that no one dared disturb the room until Dorothea’s heat finished, lest she end up at greater risk. Dimitri might be a noble and an alpha (was he?), but he cared deeply for the vulnerable. If Byleth explained what they’re doing, he could be more help than hindrance.

“Dorothea is going into heat in a few hours,” Byleth said. “I intend to sit with her until it’s over.”

Dimitri’s face turned an ugly gray shade, some combination of sick green and flushed red. His eyes clouded over; the corners gleamed suspiciously. “A… a heat? Y-you mean to share a heat with Dorothea?”

“Not share. Sit. I would never cross that line with one of my students.” For some reason that only upset him more, so Byleth continued explaining. “Dorothea’s not noble and isn’t used to heat chambers. She needs people she trusts and a familiar location for her nest to feel safe. I’m not an alpha, so I offered to help.”

Dimitri’s foggy eyes snapped into focus at ‘not an alpha,’ squinting in suspicion, but he said nothing. “I know this is a lot to ask,” Byleth continued, “and I wouldn’t if it weren’t important, but… please help me protect Dorothea through the heat.”

Asking this of an alpha (was he?) was counterintuitive, even if Dimitri was on a stronger than usual suppression regimen due to his crest’s strength. Yet he’d always been different from other alphas. Despite his otherwise superhuman reflexes, he responded a touch slower to posturing by other alphas, as if calculating his response, and he never escalated. She’d noticed it in part because the darkness Byleth glimpsed in Dimitri at other times seemed completely disconnected from his rutting instincts, which was very strange but valuable here. Her gut told her this was the right call.

"But—but—” Dimitri scrubbed his face, clearly frustrated. “I don’t understand. Why not take her to the heat chamber where she’ll be safe? Why lock yourself in her chamber this way, steal school property? Why Dorothea?” He sounded nearly in tears in his anguish. “Please pay that last question no mind. I have no right to even ask such a foolish thing.”

“Dimitri…” Byleth breathed slowly, kept herself steady in the hope that Dimitri would mirror the calm energy. “I am not mating with her, okay? She needs a friend, and I’m going to be that friend for her.”

“But Professor,” Dimitri whispered, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Do you know what you risk doing this? If they sent you away from here, I could not—our class would—”

“Let me handle that, okay?” Byleth asked. “Right now, please help me protect Dorothea.”

A beat, then: “If you needed me, Dima, I would do no less for you.”

Something about those words… changed him. Byleth could only describe it as watching a night flower bloom in the moonlight. His face grew soft, luminous in a way she only glimpsed during their tea sessions.

Then, his back straightened and his chin tilted forward. This was the king in waiting, born to command. “Then I will protect you both, Professor. You have my word, on my honor as a Blaiddyd, that you and Dorothea shall be safe.”

Byleth smiled, patting his shoulder. “Thank you, Dimitri. You’re a good man.”

* * *

_“_ Are we having fun yet, Professor?” Dorothea sat upside down on her bed, legs leaned against the wall.

Byleth looked up from grading Sylvain’s essay on the history of cavalry. He’d somehow managed to spell out several vulgar terms for genitalia with the first letter of the first word of each paragraph while still presenting a well-researched and dutifully-executed rundown of Sreng horseback riding techniques. Byleth let it slide. “Aren’t you supposed to be incapacitated?”

“What do you think I am, Professor, a pillow princess?” Dorothea laughed, the scent of fresh-bloomed roses spilling from her like a dam bursting. “I can stand the heat far longer than any of these spoiled noble omegas. We’ve got two and a half days before I’m bedridden.”

* * *

Byleth looked up from the book she and Dorothea were reading. “What was that thump?”

Dorothea shrugged and snuggled closer to Byleth. “Who cares? As long as the wards didn’t flicker, no one’s coming through the door. If they do, we have our swords.”

Good point. They returned to reading their book.

* * *

“Did I just hear Ferdinand yell his full name at the top of his lungs?”

“Try hearing it every time he charges a bandit.”

* * *

“Did… you leave a honey jar open?”

“Huh?” Dorothea looked at her blankly. “No, Professor. I’ve used honey to keep my energy up during heats before, but not this time. Why do you ask?”

Byleth sniffed the air. It was faint, but pleasant. An interesting bitter note she wouldn’t have expected. “Never mind.”

* * *

“This is… ugh, this is a bit more than usual, but I’m still hanging in there!”

Byleth hugged the shivering girl tighter to her chest. “Can you tell me a story, Dorothea?"

* * *

“You know, for someone who’s not an alpha, you smell _really_ good, Professor.”

* * *

“Professor, please. I know what we agreed on, but—”

“No, Dorothea. Stop asking.”

* * *

“I can’t do this anymore! I don’t care that you’re not an alpha, you can fuck me with the Sword of the Creator’s hilt for all I care, just _fuck_ me, Byleth, please!”

Byleth gritted her teeth. Maybe it was a bit much to hope that beeswax would be enough to block out an opera singer’s screaming.

* * *

When Dorothea finally grew desperate enough to try tackling Byleth, Byleth pinned her easily. The omega cooed happily up at her, her green eyes barely visible from the dilation of her pupils. Byleth’s lungs were about to aspirate from the roses in her lungs.

It would be so easy to cross the line. For a moment, Byleth’s eyes fixed upon the fluttering pulse above Dorothea’s scent gland and imagined what would happen if she bit there, what magic they could make together. She liked Dorothea, and in this heated, rose-drenched space Byleth might even have loved her. Byleth could even imagine herself in love with her, two outsiders clawing their way into the beating heart of Fódlan, only to break out again with swords and wine barrels and screams in the night.

And yet.

Every time Byleth dipped too close, that faint bit of bittersweet honey in the air would pull her off the ledge. The feeling of something—someone—she could not imagine betraying in that way. Leaving behind in that way.

Byleth wanted to walk beside Dorothea always, but she did not wish to walk hand in hand with her. Not the way she imagined when she caught the mad honey.

So she took a deep breath of the honey and saw color and felt sound, imagined her world verdant crimson azure, before she focused again on Dorothea. Byleth stared her down, and Dorothea tilted up her throat in submission.

“Dorothea, I need you to focus for one minute, reach deep into your heart, and ask yourself if this is what you want to—”

“Yes! Please!”

“You didn’t even let me finish!” Byleth yelled, exasperated. Dorothea shrank away, even as she bared her neck wider for Byleth’s teeth. “Is this truly what you want?”

A pause. Dorothea’s pupils contracted as she looked at Byleth, really looked at her, for the first time in days. Byleth watched her breathing slow. What questions was Dorothea asking herself right now?

What would Byleth do if Dorothea said yes?

That future, however, would never come to pass. “No. No, Professor. No offense, but I have a pack to support, and being a mercenary’s omega is not for me.”

Byleth grinned. Ridiculous diva. “Remember that, for both our sakes.”

With renewed determination, Dorothea nodded up at her. “Okay, Professor. I promise I will.”

* * *

Dorothea kept her promise, and Byleth counted the final hours in graded essays and deescalating screams. She wanted to breathe air that wasn’t like choking on rose petals again. She wanted not to be covered in the sweat and aerosolized slick of a writhing omega, of Dorothea, her student, her friend.

Then it was quiet, and Dorothea sat up, her eyes solemn and clear. “Professor, I—”

Byleth held up a hand. “It’s all right. We did it.”

She wrapped her arms around herself, rocking on the bed. “Yes. Thank you.”

Byleth smiled. “Are you ready?”

Dorothea shot her a wary grin, every inch of her ready to crack from the strain. “No, but the show must go on.”

“Okay.” Byleth picked up her pack, slinging the Sword of the Creator over her back. “Let me go first in case there is anyone waiting at the door to pounce.”

Dorothea nodded, biting her lip as she undid the wards they’d set while Byleth moved aside the dresser they’d stationed in front of the door as insurance. The door was oddly heavy as Byleth gave it a yank. She blinked against the bright light of the early evening sunset.

A cry, and then into the room tumbled Dimitri, blinking blearily up at Byleth. His face was papery and gray, with plum-black smudges beneath his eyes and hair sticking every which direction. Byleth had never seen him so bedraggled, even after a battle.

He was not the only one at the door. A tired-looking but still fresher Raphael and Caspar were sitting on the porch, sharing a bottle of wine. “Hey, Professor Eisner. Dorothea! I can’t believe you white-knuckled a heat. That is so badass.”

“See, Your Highness?” Rafael said with a cheerful smile and a smack to Dimitri’s shin. Dimitri groaned but made no effort to move. “Told ya they were alright in there.”

Byleth glanced at Dorothea, who had a hand to her mouth and the strangest glint in her eye as she stared down at Dimitri. Ozone and smoke warred for dominance in the air as they regarded one another, but Byleth couldn’t make heads nor tails of what was going on between them. Dorothea’s voice thundered as she asked, “What in the name of creation are you doing in front of my door?”

Well, guess the diva was back.

“Dimitri?” Byleth stared down at him. “Why are you here?”

“You said to protect Dorothea,” he mumbled, eyelids fluttering shut. His head turned away.

Oh.

Oh.

“You stayed out here… the whole time?” Byleth asked.

“Tried,” he mumbled, and Byleth leaned down to try and help him up. Her hand of its own volition wiped the sweat-soaked strands of hair off his forehead and he moaned softly, bumping his head into her hand.

“We were supposed to be handling this guard shift for Prince Dimitri,” Caspar explained, “but His Highness is almost as stubborn as Edelgard, so that didn’t go too well.”

Guard shift? “Who were you guarding?”

“You,” Dimitri breathed.

That didn’t make sense. They had their swords and the wards. No one even got near the door.

Then again, no one possibly could get near any door Dimitri guarded. Even Raphael and Dedue’s immense bulk were nothing to Dimitri’s crest-infused strength. He tilted up his head again, chasing her hand.

This was not what Byleth had intended. She had meant for him to protect their secret, not protect them.

_And yet._

Dimitri was exhausted. Raphael and Caspar were here because clearly a round-the-clock door watch had been instituted. There was _blood_ on the concrete, not enough to send Byleth running for the infirmary, but enough to make her jaw drop. Things had not gone as smoothly on the outside as Byleth and Dorothea had believed.

“You need to get away from him, Professor,” Dorothea said quietly, that strange glint still bright in her eye. She grabbed Byleth’s hand and tugged her back.

“What?” Byleth looked at Dorothea. “But Dimitri… ”

“Trust me on this one.” Dorothea’s voice was tight as violin strings.

 _“_ Your Highness!”

Dedue. And… Leonie?

“Dedue,” Dimitri murmured, not opening his eyes. “Forgive me.”

Leonie put a hand on Dedue’s arm. “I’m so sorry, Dedue. I tried to tell him Raph and Caspar had it covered…”

“I do not fault you, Leonie. I appreciate everything you have done these past days.” Dedue’s smile for Leonie was his rarest one, one that Byleth only saw with Dimitri. Leonie beamed back at him, looking lighter than Byleth had ever seen her. He looked up and extended it to Raphael and Caspar as well. “You have all done me a great service.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it, Dedue! Me and Raph here were happy to help!” Caspar punched Raphael’s arm.

“Ah, Dorothea! I am seeing your cat is not fire.”

Huh? Byleth turned, startled, to see Ignatz and Petra, looking way worse for wear, just like everyone else. Petra had her hair wrapped up a cap, the fabric matching her long tunic-robe-thing, while Ignatz had his shirt buttoned wrong and glasses askew. He was carrying two large bundles of food from the dining hall.

“Petra!” Dorothea smiled warmly at her fellow Eagle. “Wait, what was that about cats on fire?”

Petra scratched her cheek. “I am apologizing. We do not have cat fire in Brigid.”

“Oh, you’re talking about the… huh.” Dorothea stroked her chin. “Well, my _heat_ has ended, yes.”

“That is being… ” Petra winced and looked out towards the building. “Ignatz is bringing food!”

“Aw, thanks buddy!” Raph reached for the bundles, but Leonie slapped his hand away.

“Easy, Big Guy,” Leonie warned, “these are for Professor Eisner and Dorothea. They’re going to need them.”

Ignatz held out the bundles with a wan smile. “They should still be warm.”

Byleth studied hers after accepting it. Behind her, she heard Dedue help Dimitri up, murmuring something about helping scrubbed down, which was a relief. This entire situation was bizarre. The fact that only the beta students were here besides Dimitri, the strain on each of their faces, the blood on the concrete… come to think of it, where was everyone else? The area around the dormitories looked oddly abandoned for early evening. She held it out to Caspar. “Thank you, but I can go to the dining hall and grab something.”

“Oh, you’re not gonna have time for that.” Caspar glanced to where Dedue had Dimitri’s arm slung around him, keeping him upright. “You need some assistance there, buddy?”

“I am handling His Highness,” Dedue said, his expression still warm. Beside him, Dimitri mumbled something Byleth couldn’t catch and lurched her direction, but Dedue held him firm.

“All right, but don’t forget, we’re a support group! Which means supporting you, pal!” Raphael grinned. “Even if we occasionally get stiffed on meals.”

“I really did intend to bring those meals for you,” Ignatz protested, “but given Professor Eisner and Dorothea’s emergence, they will need them more.”

“I still don’t understand why we aren’t going to the dining hall,” Byleth said, confused, but all the members of the support group exchanged uneasy glances.

“Miss Arnault, Professor Eisner! My office. _Now._ ” Seteth’s eyes were pure, blazing fury.

Ignatz winced in sympathy. “That’s why.”

* * *

“—insubordination, disruptive behavior, nesting in an unauthorized location, theft of monastery property, failure to take appropriate heat safety measures—”

“What, get chained up and locked in some dungeon like the nobles?” Dorothea jumped up and slapped her palms on the desk, cutting off Seteth’s tirade. “How is it my problem if they can’t handle their instincts?”

“Any _one_ of those charges is potential grounds for expulsion, Miss Arnault!” Seteth bellowed at her. “I suggest you sit back down!”

Byleth couldn’t let this go on any longer. “Seteth, she’s barely post-heat—”

“They are also grounds for termination, Professor Eisner,” Seteth added with an icy glare.

Byleth shut her mouth.

Scowling, Dorothea dropped back into her seat, arms crossed in front of her chest. “I don’t understand the fuss. I’ll pay for the stupid wine and the broken door, but we sealed the room, cast silencing wards—”

“Neither of which fully blocked the sounds or scent! No one in your class has slept properly in days, Prince Dimitri and Mr. Molinaro had to organize round-the-clock protection for your door to keep rutting alphas from breaking it down, Lords Gautier and Aegir got into a fistfight— _”_

“Ferdie and Sylvie fought? Over me?” Dorothea giggled softly before Seteth glared her back into terrified submission.

“—Miss Varley and Lady Hilda are in reactive heats with all the rutting alpha scents in the air—”

“Hilda’s faking it,” Byleth and Dorothea said in unison.

“Of course she’s faking it!” Seteth yelled, pounding his fist on the desk. “Everyone knows she’s faking it! But I can’t call her bluff with everything else falling apart around us! Prince Dimitri and Princess Edelgard were at each other’s throats for most of the weekend after both refused to leave the door, and Lord Riegan nearly got his jaw broken after he tried to rush the prince—”

“Dimitri punched Claude?” Byleth asked, alarmed. What exactly went on out there?

Seteth glared at Byleth with cold eyes. “We have barely scratched the surface of the _ineffable hellscape_ you two plunged this campus into these past four days. Professor Eisner, I am well aware that teenagers act out, but as a teacher, it is your responsibility to set a good example for our students. Your flagrant disregard of our heat safety protocols placed several students, including Miss Arnault, at great risk—”

“No, Seteth, please don’t punish Professor Eisner!” Dorothea cried in panic. “She was the only one trying to help me!”

“And your idea of helping, Professor, is for you to lock yourself in a room with an omega in heat for four days?” Seteth demanded, his glare a deep freeze.

Byleth glared right back. “Beats locking her in a room to suffer alone.”

To her surprise, Seteth sighed and rubbed his temples. “I sympathize, Professor, but the heat protocols are a necessary compromise so parents of the nobility will send their children to our academy. Establishing mixed-presentation dorms was already an uphill battle, and the nobles may now question that decision again once they get word of what happened with Miss Arnault. This is not the way to voice dissent.”

“Seteth,” Dorothea pleaded, “nothing happened. If anything, I crossed the line, not Professor Eisner. She kept her wits when I couldn’t. And frankly, what does it matter? It’s not like anyone would care if I had been raped—”

“Miss. Arnault.” Seteth held up a hand to cut her off.

Byleth cringed. She’d never seen Seteth so angry. Every inch of him vibrated with rage.

“I would care, Miss Arnault,” Seteth said, voice very soft and very, very icy, “I would care very much if that happened to you, and on my watch, no less. Archbishop Rhea would care as well. I would be remiss not to mention that your class leader, the Imperial Princess of Adrestia, spent most of the past three days in front of that door with Prince Dimitri, worrying over you. She went to provide cover for both of you with the older students and visiting nobles. We do not tolerate anyone abusing our students at Garreg Mach Officers’ Academy, no matter how humble the student’s background or how powerful the abuser.”

Seteth took a breath, his fury dissipating. “Our rules are in place for a reason, Miss Arnault, those reasons being that the rutting instincts and heats of crested alphas and omegas are significantly stronger and more dangerous than those without, and they lack the real-world experience managing them that you were forced to gain at a younger age. We do our best to provide space to learn those skills safely, and unexpected heats upset the balance we have created.”

He sighed, eyes solemn. “Nonetheless, I apologize that I did not make you feel as if you would be heard, Miss Arnault. Perhaps if I had done so, we could have found a way to accommodate your heat needs without risking other students’ well being.”

Byleth wanted a sinkhole to open up beneath her, but that might be too merciful. Much as she hated to admit it, Seteth had a good point. Several good points, even.

Dorothea was quiet. She wiped her eyes with her arm. “No, Seteth, you were kind. I just… didn’t expect anyone to listen. I’m sorry.”

“I see.” Seteth’s face softened. “I imagine it is not easy for someone with your history to advocate for yourself with authority figures. I did not wish to force you when we last spoke on the matter. Should I have pushed you more instead?”

“I… no. I’m sorry,” Dorothea said with a sniff. “I’m sorry I broke the rules instead of trying harder. I really am. I honestly didn’t know it would cause this much trouble. I don’t care if you expel me, but please, please don’t fire Professor Eisner.”

Seteth shook his head, hands clasped before him. “You are fortunate to have forgiving classmates, Miss Arnault. It seems they all wish to forget this happened, and never speak of it again. I still expect you to apologize, and you will be suspended for the remainder of the month, including for the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, working on clean-up duty.”

“Um… of course,” Dorothea said quickly, trying not to bounce in her seat.

“As for you, Professor Eisner… ”

Byleth braced herself.

“… this is the week Prince Dimitri decided to remind us who his father was. You’ll be docked this month’s pay to finance the repairs, and you will not be on the battlefield this month leading your class either. Consider this the final warning for both of you.”

Byleth exhaled. It was a slap on the wrist with the chaos they caused, and she’d take it.

Dorothea burst into tears. “Oh, thank you so much Seteth! I won’t screw up again, I promise!” She hugged Byleth, who patted Dorothea’s arm awkwardly. Byleth cared deeply for Dorothea, but it had been a long four days trapped in a room with her.

“Of course. We are not heartless here.” Seteth had a surprisingly warm smile on his face. “Perhaps at a later date, Miss Arnault, we might discuss how we could accommodate non-noble omega students better here at the monastery. Furthermore, several of our nuns have special training helping those who carry heavy burdens from the past lighten those loads. I would be happy to provide you with a few names.”

“Oh.” Dorothea stroked her chin. “May I think about that?”

“Of course. You may go, Miss Arnault. Professor Eisner, a moment?”

Byleth smiled slightly in reassurance when Dorothea shot her a worried glance. Dorothea blew her a kiss before leaving. “I am sorry, Seteth. I hope Dimitri wasn’t too difficult?”

Seteth waved her off. “They all pull rank eventually. Prince Dimitri’s intentions were pure, and they found all of Claude’s teeth for Manuela to reattach.”

_What the everliving fuck._

He sighed again, exhaling even longer this time. “The students are quite devoted to you, Professor. Given how far you went to protect Dorothea, it is clear that the feeling is mutual.”

“It is.” Byleth nodded sharply.

“Then there is something I must tell you.” Seteth’s gaze was steady, searching her face. “It was not Miss Arnault’s scent that set the events of this weekend into motion. It was yours.”

Byleth blinked, and blinked again. A third time for good measure. Then she shook her head. “That’s not possible. I’m not an omega.”

Seteth leaned back, still studying her as if she were some alien thing. “No, I do not think so either. And neither are you an alpha. Certainly, your alpha and your omega classmates were equally affected by the scent you released.”

“Seteth, I didn’t used to have a scent.”

“I am aware,” he said, “which is why I wished to warn you. And also to say that if I ever catch you doing anything like this with Flayn—”

Ew, no. Had Flayn even presented?

“—or Prince Dimitri—”

Wait, what? What did Dimitri have to do with this?

“—I will make my retribution personal. Is that clear?”

No, it wasn’t clear at all! “Yes, Seteth.”

“Very well,” Seteth said. “Then in that case, Professor Eisner, you are dismissed as well. I suggest you make a beeline to the bathhouse.”

* * *

When Byleth left Seteth’s office, both Edelgard and Dimitri were waiting in the hall. Both were exhausted, but Dimitri at least looked significantly cleaned up from before. Edelgard had Dorothea’s hands clasped in hers, a look of deep concern in her eyes. “Dorothea, if you had come to me—”

“Oh Edie, you’re so sweet, but we muddled through,” Dorothea said with a wide, tremulous smile. She looked over at Byleth, eyes sparkling. “It’s over, Professor, and we survived! When should we celebrate?”

“Never,” Byleth replied.

Dorothea laughed. “Fine by me. Your Highness, thanks for protecting my door all weekend. It was really sweet of you. Sorry to put you through so much trouble.”

Dimitri bowed to her, mouth tightening at the use of his title. “It was my honor, Dorothea.”

“Oh, you did not like that.” Dorothea grinned and winked at him. “Give me some time to come up with a nickname, won’t you, Dimitri?”

Dimitri flashed Dorothea his true, dimpled smile. “Take whatever time you need, Dorothea.”

“Professor.” Edelgard had that searching, soul-razing gaze that discomfited Byleth. “Your actions prove that you are willing to challenge conventional wisdom for the good of those who are harmed by a broken system. A pity you are not the Black Eagles’ professor, but I am glad we can rely upon your aid in trying times nonetheless.”

Dimitri put his hand on Byleth’s bicep, squeezing unexpectedly hard.

Byleth shrugged at Edelgard. “It’s not just me.” Byleth motions to at Dimitri. “I’ve learned a lot from the Blue Lions’ willingness to stand for what they believe is right, no matter their opponent.”

Dimitri released Byleth’s arm, though his hand remained, and Edelgard studied them both. “I see. I… suppose I owe you an apology, Dimitri.”

All three of them waited for Edelgard to speak. As time passed and their stares grew more awkward, Edelgard’s brow furrowed. “What? That was all.”

Dimitri smiled his biggest, fakest Prince Charming smile at her as he bowed. “Think nothing of it, Edelgard, and allow me to extend my apologies to you as well. Despite our differences, we both only wished to protect Dorothea.”

Edelgard’s brows rose. “Right. You were protecting _Dorothea._ ”

What was that about?

Dorothea, sensing the tension, squeezed Edelgard’s hands. “Let’s get out of here, Edie. I smell like a brothel.”

Edelgard smiled indulgently. “You are both… pungent, yes.”

They walked off, Edelgard’s arm around her classmate. As Byleth watched them go, Dimitri turned back to Byleth. His brows were knit in concern. “Are you all right, Professor?”

She nodded at him. “Fine. I just need a bath. And food. And sleep. And bath.” She blinks. “Have I mentioned bath?”

Dimitri laughed. “The remaining Blue Lions are preparing a meal for the entire class. It should be ready after your bath.”

Byleth meant to ask how many Blue Lions still remained, but then Dimitri smiled his small smile, the one with the dimples and the bright eyes, and something hot and wanting twisted in Byleth’s stomach.

“Did I… did I do well, Professor?” he asked shyly, like a pet angling for a treat.

Her mouth went dry.

He stared at her with those big, pleading eyes, desperate for her to toss him a scrap of praise.

Byleth scoped the area. No one was around. That she felt the need to check should send up her alarms. But she was tired, and he was so very eager. The thing gnawing at her for the past four days and nights returned with a vengeance at the sight of him.

Dimitri did so well, kept them both safe. It would be cruel of her to deny him a reward. Byleth was not cruel.

So she leaned in close, taking his hand, her thumb stroking over the heartline of his palm. Then she whispered in his ear, “You did very well. You’re such a good boy… Dima.”

Byleth drank in the way he shivered and gasped at her touch, her words.

Later, in the baths, she replayed it in her mind, over and over again.

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

Byleth awakens in her bedroll to something soft and warm, if a bit greasy, beneath her hand. She cracks her eyes open, then scrunches them shut, unsure if she believes what they’re telling her. Yet the honey-sweet chamomile is sharp in her nostrils and the warmth against her skin confirms it. She opens her eyes again.

Dimitri dozes a foot away from her on the stone, and her hand is sitting atop his head. Byleth knows she did not place it there, which means that he must have done so. _Needy thing._

When her hand moves, his lips part in a soft moan, and he nuzzles against her like one of the monastery’s cats. She strokes his hair, and he shivers, his breath a light staccato.

He’s deep in his heat now, Byleth reminds herself. Even an omega as prickly and self-sufficient as Dimitri would be desperate for any scrap of affection. Few omegas, Byleth suspects, are more desperate than Dimitri.

Admitting the truth leaves her breathless, woozy. She thumps her head back onto the tower wall. Admitting the truth means she has to face the problem. A problem she made worse with six years denying what her body knew all along.

_I would do no less for you._

She can no longer keep her promise.

There are countless reasons why she can’t stay. They’re in the middle of a war. If they win the war, he’ll be a king and she will be… what will she be? ( _What is she?_ ) What will the other Lions say? What will Gilbert say? What will Rodrigue say? What will the nobles of Faerghus she doesn’t have to execute with extreme prejudice say? She’s getting ahead of herself, because whatever reprieve Dimitri grants himself from the dead during his heats, it will end, and then what? He returns to his fruitless quest to appease the dead with more death? What about her? Byleth carries the soul of a progenitor god. He may believe he has an obligation to the dead, but she has a far greater obligation to the living. ( _What is she?_ ) Can she drive him from his course or will he always pick the dead over the living? Will she doom herself to a life playing second fiddle to his ghosts? Even if she can drive him from his course, is it really safe for her to mate with anyone, given Sothis inside her, much less a man whose grip on reality is flimsy at best? What about Fhirdiad? Should she even touch Fhirdiad? Why does she always have to be the one to make the hard calls? (She knows why, divinity, chosen one, blah blah blah.) At what point does Dimitri take some responsibility for his role in this mess? For his people? For this whole damn war? What exactly is his responsibility? What is her responsibility? Why is Dimitri her responsibility? Why does it feel like everyone expects her to fix him like he’s a rusted sword or a snapped lance? Why can’t he just tell her what he wants? Why can’t he see that pushing everyone away because he feels “unworthy” is only hurting the very people he claims to want to protect? Why is she even here in Garreg Mach? Why isn’t she back on the road with her dad’s old broadsword with the wind at her back? Why is any of this her problem? _What is she?_

Some alpha she is. ( _Not an alpha_ , her brain chimes in helpfully.) She could really use an adult. Or Sothis. She’d settle for Sothis.

Byleth stands up and starts pacing as she thinks. She’s never used her Divine Pulse to go back farther than a day, and that was hard on her body, but she could push back farther if necessary. That would mitigate some, but not all, of the damage. Damage is being done no matter when she leaves. So where is the best exit point? Before he told her about Fhirdiad? Before she touched herself on the balcony and revealed she’s not _not_ an alpha? Before she took off his armor? Before he fell in her arms? Before she could practically taste the line of his—

“Pro-professor?”

Startled from the whirlwind of her thoughts, Byleth spins around to find Dimitri, heaving with each breath as he attempts to leverage himself into a standing position. He’s trying to look angry, but his limbs curl on themselves in his agony and he smells like pure terror.

“What has gotten into you?” He tries to bark, but the last word rises to a high whine.

Byleth groans. _Pulse. Now._

Dead heart clenched, Byleth summons her Divine Pulse…

…and nothing happens.

No whoosh of air. No swirling miasma of present and past. No vertigo.

Byleth tries again.

This time she focuses on the pulse’s mechanism to diagnose the problem. She examines the place in her stone heart where the magic of the Pulse resides, but when she taps into it, there’s no answering rush of power. Not spent, just… elsewhere. As if on a holiday.

_Where? Why? How?_

Unimportant now. What’s important is that she leaves, because there will be no fixing this, no undoing whatever damage she will be leaving in her wake, but she can stanch the bleeding by not dawdling.

Dimitri grabs her arm, pulling her closer to him, blood and smoke practically choking her they mix with his mad honey. He’s trying to loom over Byleth, but he leans far too much of his weight into that fragile connection between them.

Moment of truth, Byleth realizes. She stares up at him with the full force of her will. It works; Byleth has never let little details like height stop her from being the most terrifying person in every room.

As his eye gets caught in her unflinching gaze, Byleth says, “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	11. eleven (it's time we danced with the truth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You pretended to be a predator for years, but from the moment I saw you, I knew you were prey.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings.** I legitimately do not know how to express warnings for this chapter. While all of the events in this chapter is made explicitly consensual between both parties, given Dimitri's mental state, the way things play out may be disturbing to readers, and could tip into domestic violence. Furthermore, Dimitri probably is not in an emotional place where he can meaningfully consent, which blurs things further. Therefore the dubcon warning remains in effect. Also, some of the practices in here are not safe or sane, and the risk awareness is... tenuous at best. Take care of yourselves.
> 
> Chapter title from Lorde's [Sober](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvgigkaSCZA) I and alternate lyric title for this chapter is "but my hips have missed your hips."
> 
> I won't keep y'all any longer; I know what you're here for.

Dimitri’s face and scent are rapid-fire studies in devastation: the look in his eye is pure anguish, and his scent are _honey-please-please-honey-poison-ROT-FILTH,_ tapping his plea for her not to leave him here to into her eyes and her nose.

As the moment drags on, however, what Byleth hears is a dull, lifeless, voice. “Leave, then, if you must.”

Right. Leave. Dimitri doesn’t care if Byleth stays or goes, so she should go before she hurts him. She must get her things and go. Never mind that he looks like heartbreak and smells like agony, visibly shaking with the pain of standing before her; she’s heartless anyway. So she must go.

She needs to get her things. And go. Go. _Go._

Reports, right. Mustn’t forget Ashe’s dirty book. Her change of clothes hanging on the stair rail. Oh, and the extra rations, no use leaving it up here to rot. Did she leave some of the paperwork on the balcony? She’ll leave the extra wineskins she brought, and take the bucket down—

“ _Why won’t you **say** it?!_”

—there were two buckets, weren’t there? Maybe she can take down some of the dirtied rags for the charwoman to clean—

“Say what, Professor?”

—did he use any of the vulneraries? She can take the empty bottles down to the chemists, glass containers are hard to come by—

“Say you want me to stay!” Byleth screams. “Or say you don’t! I don’t care which anymore, but use your words for once!”

—where did her inkwell go? Did she leave it by the—

—and Dimitri’s fainting, which means Byleth is catching him.

_Again._

The one-eyed demon, the boar prince.

Just _swooned in her arms_ like a goddess-damned _maiden_.

(Which, Byleth reminds herself, Dimitri _is._ A murderous, muscle-bound, shaggy-haired, one-eyed battle-scarred _brute_ of a maiden who could crush his alpha’s skull in a careless gesture, but a maiden nonetheless, and more desperately in need of tenderness than any “traditional” omega maiden Byleth had ever met.)

Still. This is Manuela’s made-up opera levels of melodrama. This is Ashe’s dirty-book-level absurdity. This is borderline _Hilda_ levels of histrionic, and Byleth’s starting to wonder if they’re equally as fake.

Yet Byleth can’t ignore the way Dimitri’s trembling body slackens the moment she has a halfway-decent grip on him, as if he knows in that moment it’s safe to let go. Dimitri’s head lolls limply into Byleth’s scent gland as she grapples him into a bridal carry. He’s heavy, even if he’s still far too light for someone with his height and frame. His skin is hot and flush against her, and he shakes almost violently in her arms.

A few breaths taken at her scent gland seem to half-revive him, and Dimitri winds his arms around her neck, as if to nestle closer. Byleth glances down and even with the pain of the heat simmering beneath his skin, he seems almost content. He hums softly, less dispirited than before.

Byleth carries him back to the nest, gently laying him down among the furs. Dimitri’s arms tighten around her neck, steel-banded even in his febrile state. A soft, confused moan slips out as Byleth pries herself from his arms, his eye dazed and glassy.

He smells so _good_. He wants her; she sees it in the shiver of his skin and the wetting of his lips when her eyes pass over them.

_Take what’s yours._

Rage blooms inside Byleth like blood roses, thorns cutting like knives as they rend her from the inside. Their damage spills from her mouth.

“Tell me to stay, or tell me to go. _Now_.”

Dimitri, stubborn, proud, _terrified,_ swallows and turns away from her with a heavy sigh. “I have told you, have I not?” he asks tiredly. “Do as you wish with me.”

That only enrages Byleth more. Grabbing his chin, she forces Dimitri to face her, but his eye is unfocused, glossy. “ _Look_ at me!” Byleth orders Dimitri, and he obeys with a fearful gulp. “I will _not_ be one of those animals who stole something they had no right to take! You will _not_ lay here and submit to your fate like a leaf blowing in the wind! _Tell me to stay, or tell me to go!_ ”

That, finally, rouses something hot and furious in Dimitri. Shaking off her grip on his face, he sits up on his elbows with a rumbling in his chest. Byleth realizes with a dawning horror that Dimitri is _laughing._

“Don’t you—don’t you see, Professor?” Dimitri sputters through his mad, wild cackling, “Don’t you _know?_ Did I not once swear to you that my strength was yours, that I would fight as you command, kill anyone should you ask it of me? Can you not smell the shame upon me, the nights I breathed your orders and drank your praise, let them fuel the shameful urges of my miserable body? How often I imagined myself a plaything of yours, to be used and discarded at your leisure, as if the dead had not already laid claim to my wicked life? How audacious I was to dream myself knotted by you, claimed by you, _bred_ by you, so all of Fódlan might see _I_ was your chosen, not Dorothea, not pretty, scheming Claude, not _that woman!_ ” Dimitri spits the last two words, ugly against all the lovely, lovely filth spilling from his lips.

Her mouth is dry.

Byleth should be disturbed. She should not revel in his desperation for her. She should not feel sparks shoot down her legs as he speaks. She should not ache to cut him open and drink his pretty poison until they both were insensate.

“And then you—you—you… you _died_ ,” he gasps, pure death on that last word, “you _died_ and they took what belonged to _you_ , to _you_ , the one thing the dead could not demand of me, and it was _you_ who consumed my fever dreams, and it was in _your_ name I killed every alpha that _dared…_ after.”

Her cunt should not clench furiously at the thought of his heat-slick body writhing in the blood of the interlopers, unworthy of the gift spread before her. _Filthy intruders._ The demon within her is proud in its twisted way.

“I am a murderous brute, soiled and defiled, blood-stained… monstrous… undeserving of touch, yet—yet still—still I crave _yours,_ as my lance craves beasts’ blood. Walking corpse that I am—unfit for claiming by any alpha, much less the goddess’s chosen. No, though I am unworthy to be a mate… I am _yours,_ Professor, and you cannot steal what already belongs to you, filthy and ruined as it may be.” His voice is small, broken. “Use me as you wish. _Please_. Let me be _your_ whore and not _theirs._ ”

_Fuck._

“But if I… if that is not what you wish of me, then _please_. _Leave_. Let me rot in peace.”

Byleth stares blankly down on Dimitri, watches him shudder in mingled anticipation and terror, his mouth a perfect red circle and chamomile sharp in her nose.

“I beg of you, say something!”

Fool. As if he’s any right to ask for anything. As if they are still _mercenary_ and _prince_ , and not _god_ and _supplicant._

“You want to be… my whore,” she says, dizzy with the thought. With the horror. With the _lust._

He gulps, nodding shakily.

Byleth wants to backhand him. To yank his hair, spit in his face, grab his throat and _squeeze_ until he hangs upon the precipice. She wants him to hurt as she’s hurt, for him, and by him.

Byleth aches to be _cruel._

“Okay.”

So cruel is what she will be.

Byleth cups Dimitri’s scarred right cheek with her hand. Dimitri near trembles in anticipation of what vicious works she will make of him, used until the flesh falls from his bones. She is slow, careful as she leans down and butterfly-ghosts her mouth to his. Delicate, reverent, barely registering as a kiss. Sweetly tender as her mouth brushes his, cradling his face in her hands as if it were the sort of fragile thing he so feared breaking.

Dimitri, in contrast, is rigid with shock. He tenses as if preparing to spring into battle. His breath wheezes and stutters as his anger rises like smoking out a beehive. He wrenches up, clumsy as he attempts to force his mouth to hers. It’s nothing to Byleth to hold him at bay, keep their kiss soft.

Growling, Dimitri shoves his hand through Byleth’s hair, coarse as he pulls her mouth against his. Byleth holds herself sculpture-still as his lips work themselves against hers, desperate to drink her nectar, but the seal of her mouth remains unbroken. An exercise in futility and he knows it: she’s always been the immovable object to his unstoppable force. His hand drops away, put aside for now, and his mouth recedes.

Once he’s released her, Byleth resumes. He’s panting heavily in his rising-flame fury, and his parted lips are a perfect opportunity to slot her mouth to his. His mouth is still cherry-blossom soft beneath cracked, dry skin, and he tastes the way she’s been dreaming, honey and blood and smoke and _perfect_. Byleth wants the blooming, melting poison sweetness of him, wants to steal every drop of air from his lungs and breathe it back into him so deeply even his lungs will obey her whims.

Leaning her forehead against his, Byleth moves to the corner of his mouth. “Cease this nonsense.” Meant to be a growl, more of a whine instead.

“What nonsense?” Byleth murmurs as her mouth moves to his jaw, peppering it with kisses, each delicate as snowflakes.

His anger rises like cleansing fire in her nose, consuming everything in its path. In response, Byleth finally— _finally!_ —licks the column of his throat, and oh _oh_ it tastes like salt and honey and _Dimitri_ , and how did she live twenty-six years without this on her tongue? Dimitri, in turn, gives her a mewling gasp as his eye burns with rage. His hand closes around her wrist in warning, but again Byleth waits, turning patience into its own cruelty.

With a muttered curse, Dimitri releases her, and Byleth resumes again.

As her hands trail down the ragged expanse of him, Dimitri twitches and shudders at the lightest brush of her fingers, tiny, choked noises wrenched from his mouth. Byleth presses another soft kiss to the corner of his lips. He whimpers, but it’s hateful, loathing. When she withdraws, however, his rage burns even hotter in her nostrils. She contents herself with gently sucking on the scent-spot above his collarbone, delighting in the charming keens she gets in return.

Her mouth descends again, exerting just enough force to settle him back into the furs with a soft scratch of his head. He flushes fever-bright as he leans into her hands. This time her tongue luxuriates over a gnarled pair of crossed scars over his chest. They taste like rage and her cunt throbs at the thought of reclaiming every last scar of his in this way, making all of them _hers._

She discovers his fingers digging into her hips as Byleth swirls her tongue around one stiff pink nipple. Forceful enough to bruise, but not the plum-black dots he’s pressed into his own skin these past days. “No.”

Byleth stops, moves back to give him the space that word demands. He grunts, furious, and reaches to pull her back to him, but Byleth is unmoved, not even with Dimitri’s diminished but still impressive strength. He growls and lets go.

Feigning innocence, she strokes his face. “Do you want me to stop? It’s okay if you do.”

The _noise_ he makes is a revelation, distraught and furious, yet he shakes his head in defeat. His hands fall off her hips and thump back into the nest, curled into fists. Smoke and blood and _honey-honey-honey-chamomile_. Byleth pets his head. “You tell me if you need me to stop for any reason, okay?”

“Tell you to _stop_ ,” Dimitri says, anguished. “As if _that_ were the problem.”

“Then what is the problem?” Byleth’s hands grip his shoulders harder, kneading the tangled knots in his muscles as he hisses with the pain-pleasure. His hand shoots out and wraps itself around her wrist. Byleth slowly removes her other hand and waits.

“Do not play games,” he snarls at her, vestiges of the alpha he was raised to be raising their specter. “I told you to do wh-what you wished with me, did I not?”

This time, Byleth pries each of Dimitri’s fingers off her wrist. She takes his hand and puts it aside, pressing it deliberately into the furs as wordless instruction before releasing him. Something about that causes his rigid tension to slip, just a bit. She wishes she could restrain him—many omegas found it pleasurable, found it left them feeling more secure when with a trusted partner—but with Dimitri’s history, it’s too big a risk to even suggest.

“I _am_ doing,” Byleth kisses the hollow of his throat, drinking in the nectar of him, “what I wish with you.” That catches Dimitri off-guard enough for Byleth to steal one of his delightful moans, robbed from his mouth like the thief she is. His eye is hazy and sad, a glimpse beyond the beast protecting its master to the timid, longing omega underneath.

Dimitri snarls at her even as his eyelid flutters when Byleth’s hand drags down to his navel. “Liar,” he rasps. “I know what alphas want.”

True and untrue. So Byleth smirks, and reminds him: “Not an alpha.”

He answers her quip and the drag of her teeth along his stomach by hauling Byleth up by her hair to meet his eye. The sting of it is sharp, exciting to Byleth. Fires rise around them, burning herbs and bitter honey, but his mouth quivers, and Byleth dares another tiny kiss.

“Stop mocking me!” he cries, his honey consumed in self-immolation. He’s beautiful when he makes those sobbing sounds. He’s always beautiful and Byleth wants to be drunk on him forever. “Stop treating me as if I were some fragile thing!”

Her nails scratch the skin between his thighs and he huffs softly. He’s so very wet for her, slick streaked across his quivering legs. Byleth’s finger traces delicate patterns up his thighs, delighting in his shudder as her fingers circle closer to the base of his cock. His body starts and stops as if puppeted by strings, jerking with each new touch.

“You are,” Byleth says. Simple. True. “You are fragile, and I want to be gentle with you. You’re beautiful, and I’ve been dreaming of you for years.”

Dimitri _snaps._

In a lightning-strike sequence, Dimitri grabs Byleth’s waist, rolls them both over, and pins her beneath his heavy body. His eye scalds her with blue fire, teeth bared as each shaking hand clamps a wrist down. His heavy, leaking cock, rather than sitting at or near her entrance, is trapped between their stomachs, and his slick legs smear over her. Byleth wonders if she’ll die first from the crush of his weight or by inhaling the eternal flame of his rage.

“Why?” he says, his growl mangled into a sob. “ _Why?_ ”

Byleth blinks up at him, unmoved. “Why what?”

Dimitri practically howls in agony. “Why won’t you _h-hurt_ me?”

Byleth, deep freeze to his eternal flame, glares up at Dimitri. _“Aren’t I?”_

A gasp like a shockwave.

Quick as he was atop Byleth, Dimitri’s weight vanishes. He’s huddled and shivering, head buried in his arms as he curls up protectively.

“You told me,” Byleth reminds him coldly, “that you wanted to be my whore. What did you expect?”

_How dare you,_ Byleth thinks, _how dare you think I wouldn’t see through your bullshit. How dare you believe I think so little of you. How dare you think so little of yourself._

“I expected you to—” _nothing_ , he expected _nothing_ from Byleth, because _nothing_ is Dimitri’s best-case scenario, _nothing_ is what his hope looks like, _nothing_ is his idea of a goddess-damned blessing, “—treat me as the disgusting, blood-soaked monster I am! _I expected you to give me what I deserve!”_

His words sock her gut, a sucker-punch to her dead heart as tears stream from his good eye, the wound of his lost eye bruise-stark against his pale, flushed misery.

“But I don’t want to,” Byleth says, and it’s true. Oh, she’s no more a saint in the bedroom than she is on the battlefield, but here, now? Byleth finds her lust for violence has abandoned her. “I don’t want to be cruel to you.”

Strange. True. Must everything between them be a battle? Must they always be at war?

Dimitri flinches at her confession, sobbing softly into his arms. “I don’t deserve your kindness.”

It’s difficult to stay angry with Dimitri when the death and the rot and the honey infuse his every word. Difficult, but not impossible. “I don’t care,” Byleth begins, “what _you_ think you deserve from me. I decide that, not you.”

“No,” he says, and his face is in his hands, scrubbing at his tears, running his nails down his cheeks. “I can’t, I—please, I’m not, I’m not worth it, why, why why _why?_ ” A high wail, confused, desolate.

Maybe it’s time for a different approach.

Maybe it’s time for the truth.

“Aren’t you tired?” Byleth asks, no longer sure if she’s asking Dimitri or herself. She strokes his taut back, pets his hair. He keens when she scratches his scalp. “I am. I’m tired and I miss you. Right here, right now, there is nothing you can do for anyone, living or dead, except for me. You could let me help you. You could do that for me. I _want_ to help you. Please, Dimitri… _Dima._ Let me take care of you. _Please._ ”

_Let me do what I should have done that night that never happened five years ago. Let me do what I should have done the moment I found you three months ago. Let me do what you’ve been silently begging for all these years._

Maybe it’s not Dimitri who needs kindness at this moment. Maybe it’s Byleth who needs to give kindness, who needs to be soft in this space beyond war.

Byleth never knows how long she sits there with Dimitri, waiting for him to set down his weapons. She’s not sure what it will do to her if he turns her away now.

Then, quiet, defeated: “It _hurts._ ”

Byleth’s anger collapses like a burnt-out building frame. “I know,” she says, though she didn’t, truly, until she felt the fires within him scorch her with that word. “I know, Dima. Let me make it better?”

A shaky, shuddering breath. Dima pops his eye back open, deep-ochre lashes wet with his tears. Mad honey. Chamomile. He nods, small and terrified and desperate. _“Please.”_

“Okay,” Byleth says. “Tell me what you need.”

It’s quiet as Dima gathers enough splinters of courage to loosen his tongue. “Take me, please,” he begs, squeezing his eye shut.

“Good boy.” She kisses the valley of his ruined eye, and he sobs aloud. Byleth savors the salt of his tears on her tongue, and he shudders at Byleth’s words. With gentle motions, she pulls him into her embrace. “Thank you for telling me. I want to give that to you, but when you keep asking me to stop…”

“I know,” he whispers, shame-faced. “I just… I don’t understand, Professor, why you’re being th-this way with me. Treating me as if I were a…”

Byleth sighs and lays her head on his chest. “A maiden?”

The tightening of his body is all the answer she needs.

“Have you lain with anyone else?” Byleth asks, looking up at him.

He flushes, shame-faced, but shakes his head. “O-only my mouth.”

This isn’t the time to delve into the construct of maidenhood, so Byleth tells him, “Then you’re still a maiden, but even if you had been with others that way, you’d still be worthy of gentle treatment.”

Again his arms tighten and nearly choke the air from her. “I don’t deserve you.”

A frisson of irritation flares in Byleth. “That’s for me to decide,” she says with more force than she intended, and Dima shrinks away at the bite in her tone. He’s mollified quickly enough with a scratch of his scalp.

Dima’s resistance doesn’t break so much as it disintegrates in her arms, tension draining from his limbs as he gives himself to her care. His relief is palpable as his hips squirm, slick-wet legs sliding as he moans brokenly for her. Byleth tries to tip his chin to look directly at her but Dima struggles so much, whimpering in protest even as he tries to force himself, that she has to reassure him he’s allowed to say no. What she glimpses of his eye through his lashes is so shattered, so vulnerable and submissive that it takes Byleth’s breath away, even as it reawakens her ashen demon.

He’s overwhelmed, and so is Byleth. For all that she hungered for this moment, for Dima helpless and eager in her arms, Byleth never quite let herself believe that she’d get here. Never let herself imagine the start, because that would mean there was one, and Byleth couldn’t let her mind go there.

She considers her options. A watchword would be her usual solution, but Byleth doesn’t trust Dima to use it as intended. Better she keep checking in with him and enforcing that he has permission to say ‘no,’ even if her body’s frustrated by the stop-and-start. Then she remembers a situation a few years back with a different omega, a wry thing with flaming hair and warm skin who’d insisted Byleth gag her, and inspiration strikes.

“I want to get something out of my pack,” Byleth tells Dima, and after a long beat, he releases her. It takes more willpower to leave him there, even to go a few steps, than Byleth expects, but it’s worth it when she finds the cloth Ashe used for breakfast that morning. “Sit up for me.”

Dima eyes her nervously as Byleth folds the cloth and ties it over his good eye, humming Sothis’s song as she works. “Good boy,” she says, her hand at the back of his neck, and he sighs, shivering sweetly. “Take off the cloth whenever you want.”

He nods, shaky, and Byleth waits a while to see how he’ll react, idly toying with his palm in hers. Dima is anxious about the blindfold, but there are no spikes in his behavior or scent. Once the blood clears and leaves mad honey behind, she runs the back of her hand against his cheek.

“Professor,” Dima whispers, uncertain, “what are you—”

_This_ time when Byleth kisses Dima, he melts, so beautifully pliant that Byleth can properly kiss him senseless. She seals the space between their mouths with such intensity that there is no air in his lungs that Byleth did not first breathe into him. Dima yields to her so sweetly, eagerly, moaning brokenly into Byleth as her tongue cleanses him, purifies the last of the acrid smoke and finds nothing but the bittersweetness of his mad-honeyed mouth in her wake. Byleth tastes every day of his five lonely years in his kiss, and she grips him tighter, closer as she infuses her mouth and her scent with every drop of tenderness she can distill into a moment.

Dima whimpers when she gently pulls him back down to the furs; already he sinks deeper into the nest than she’d seen him when sleeping. Now when Byleth sweeps her hands and mouth over the beautiful wreckage of him he whines and shivers, but each careful touch sends him deeper into his honeyed haze.

“Professor,” he breathes through broken moans, “Professor, I—”

Whatever Dima meant to say is lost to Byleth licking the tip of his cock. He’s softened, but Byleth can fix that quickly enough. When she pops the head in her mouth, Dima’s entire body hitches, air squeezing out of lungs never to return. Swirling her tongue around like he’s a lollipop gets a delicious cry out of him; rolling back his foreskin with her lips and dragging her tongue along the sensitive ridge at the head is even better. Soon he’s back to full mast in her mouth, and Byleth gently angles her face to take the entirety of him in her mouth for a bit, sucking hard at the base as Dima cries aloud, keeping his hips blessedly still despite the way he practically vibrates beneath her. As a reward, Byleth gropes for his hand and takes it in hers. He takes it as if she’d tossed him a rope to the heavens, lacing his fingers with hers as if she’d drag him to salvation.

With the other hand, Byleth reaches for Dima’s face, gently stroking his cheek and jaw. He nuzzles into her like the big kitten he is. The next time his lips part to release some pretty, filthy noise, Byleth slides two fingers inside. “Get these wet for me, won’t you?”

He obeys eagerly, moaning softly around her fingers as he sucks them with the same diligence she sucks his cock. Dima holds himself rigid, unwilling to buck up into her mouth, and it’s such a _Dima_ gesture that she smiles briefly before she sucks hard at the full length of him and nearly undoes all his good work.

Curious, Byleth releases Dima’s cock from her mouth with a satisfying pop and leans over him. His head is tilted away from her, his mouth falling slack and wet. Every inch of him trembles, vibrating beneath her, as she toys with his opening. Drool pools at the sides of Dima’s mouth as a low moan activates in his throat. Dima’s protest when she removes her fingers is so loud that Byleth has to quickly warn him. “Be good.”

Dima releases Byleth’s fingers with a sad, meek whine.

All protest is forgotten as Byleth’s wet fingers gently edge around his slick entrance. Dima struggles not to squirm, yelping as the first finger breaches his hole and slides inside after token resistance. In response, his hips sink down on her finger, swallowing it in its entirety, his shuddering frame involuntarily fucking himself upon it. The second finger slides in with even greater ease than the first.

“Please.” It’s hoarse, distant. Byleth’s cunt is practically pulsing with the stroke of her fingers inside him, and she licks another drop of his perfect bittersweetness off his cock. Her lust is heady and high, making her head spin. She almost regrets blindfolding Dima because she aches to see the look in his eye, but his body still tells a story of fires burning within him, her touch the only relief.

“What do you need, Dima?” Byleth asks as she stretches him. Omega crest magic might loosen his body and make all forms of insertion very pleasurable, but she still prefers to warm him up with her hands.

Dima babbles mindlessly, near-inconsolable as he tries to fuck himself upon her fingers, but the fires inside him are unquenchable by the weak cant of his hips. Byleth takes pity and slides in a third finger, probing him more actively now as she searches for a particular spot that will heighten his pleasure further. She knows she’s found it when she’s rewarded with a full-body twitch and a strangled cry. “I need you,” Dima begs, near-hysterical. “Please, please, _please…_ ”

“Please what?” she asks him, squeezing his hand. He squeezes hers back hard enough to bruise, but not hard enough to break.

Byleth returns to the spot she’s found, moving her fingers back and forth over the bundle of nerves. Dima cries incoherently as he desperately presses himself onto her fingers, fruitlessly chasing his pleasure. Byleth offers him small tastes, quick, unsatisfying touches that leave him even more eager and needy in her arms.

“Tell me, sweet boy,” she coos into his ear, her fingers scissoring inside him. “Won’t you be a good omega and tell me?”

Dima full-body shakes as he pleads, “Take me, _please, please_ Professor!” Byleth rewards him with a strong stroke inside him and drinks his keening from his mouth. Salt and spit mingle pleasantly on her tongue.

“Good boy,” Byleth murmurs, and he sobs aloud, his cock red and leaking as it thrusts uselessly upward. His legs fall open with the ease of the whore he begged her to be.

She will give Dima what he needs, but not before she’s decided he’s ready. Byleth’s mouth returns to the base of his cock, planting loose, wet kisses up the base, listening for his whines of pleasure. When she swallows the length of him in a single motion, his body jumps beneath her. She hums as she sucks lazily at his cock, amused at how the low vibration of her throat drives him wild, and begins a more relentless assault upon both fronts. Her mouth suckles him with renewed force as his body clamps vise-tight onto her fingers. Every moan of Dima’s is longer and higher-pitched than the last.

With a final, frantic cry, Dima’s hips cant upwards, but Byleth quickly clamps the base of his cock with her fingers as she strokes inside him, and he pumps the air. Thin, clear streams of liquid dribble from the tip. He roars in half-ecstasy, half-anguish, pounding his fists into the stone floor as uselessly as his cock’s bobbing. Still trembling and breathy, he collapses back onto the stone, whimpering softly.

“That’s a good, sweet boy,” Byleth murmurs, stroking his hair. Dima moans and presses into her touch, needy and dazed. When she pulls away, he’s so distraught that Byleth briefly places a hand on her shoulder to anchor him.

She sings softly as she stops to wash her hands, and Dima curls around her as she does. His head settles in her lap and even as he shakes, he makes no move to touch still-heavy cock or needy hole. “Look at you, being so good,” Byleth says, and Dima hums contentedly underneath her. “Look how beautifully you submit to me.”

Terrifying as well, if Byleth is honest with herself. She doesn’t need to be able to look Dima in the eye to know he’s gazing up at her with utter devotion; she can see it in the way every part of him angles itself to be closer, snaps up every scrap of touch and attention he’s starved for all these years. Dima has spent so long at war, he has no defenses against peace.

(Byleth isn’t sure how much her self-preservation instincts leave for peace, either.)

“Are you ready?” Byleth asks, touching his forehead with hers.

“Yes yes yes please,” he begs, lapsing back into babbling. “I’m ready, I’m ready, Professor, I’m ready, I’ve been ready for you for so long… ”

With a lingering honeyed kiss, Byleth spikes her scent, and Dima goes fuzzy and slack, smiling helplessly up at her. Lust makes her mouth water. She repositions Dima’s hips, and he’s sweetly docile beneath her, allowing himself to be manipulated to her specifications. She slides her fingers beneath his buttocks, massaging them gently, earning a soft moan as her fingers dig into the skin. Grabbing a few of the rolled furs she’d brought with her, she motions for him to lift his hips so she can place them below and provide her the leverage she needs. Her fingers brush his hole, and the brush of contact sends him into a frenzy.

“I need—Professor, I— _please_ ,” Dima babbles, the blindfold over his eye damp with sweat and tears.

As if Byleth could ever deny him.

When the magics formulate, at first she’s careful to be mindful of the size and girth, but a glance over at Dima’s natural bounty ruins her plans. So help her, she wants the biggest dick in the room, even if it is a temporary manifestation.

Dima’s legs naturally open for her, revealing the large pool of slick beneath him. Byleth smiles and scoops up a bit, lubricating her cock with the fluid to ease her path further. “You’re so wet for me, aren’t you, sweet boy?” Byleth says, and he nods sloppily.

When she palms his cheek, Dima’s mouth chases her thumb. To tease him further, she slides her cock over his thighs, rubbing his hole with the shaft. His mouth drops open softly as the pleasure builds in him again. Byleth pulses at the dark joy of watching him succumb to lust, his mind black as he’s pulled under by the flames of his heat.

Byleth is slow and patient as she enters him, watching Dima’s mouth widen as the tip of her settles past the ring of muscle at his entrance. His entrance tightened a bit after the not-quite-orgasm, but the scent spike and the echoes of pleasure relax his limbs and fog his mind to ease her passage. She nudges inside him, permitting his body to adjust, before pushing in another fraction. The feedback from her magic, besides feeling hot and tight, lets her know when she’s getting the wrong kind of resistance, but there is little of that. Dima’s so wet for her that each inch glides in with sublime ease, and it’s a twisted delight to watch him moan with each intrusion before the pleasure subsumes him again. Each inch makes his mad honey dizzyingly sweet, and the chamomile stronger in her nose.

She drinks in his unsteady moans with her mouth, her hand pinning his shoulder while Dima squirms in a parody of resistance. When the last inch of her is finally within him, his head falls back as he groans aloud, drool spilling over his lips. Byleth grinds down her pelvis, knowing that will force the ridge of her that sits along that pleasure nodule to dig deeper into him, push the pleasure further into his psyche. Dima yells out, a quivering, needy wreck in her arms, bouncing feebly against her cock as she allows him to adjust to her.

It takes a moment to orient herself to feeling what she’s doing rather than experiencing the magical feedback in a passive way, but once Byleth does, the incredible pleasure of having Dima vise-clamped and scorching around her threatens to overwhelm all her good intentions. She throttles herself back, refocuses on Dima. Her grin is cruel as she bites his lip. Dima hisses, but he chases her mouth more eagerly than before.

_Poor pretty thing,_ Byleth thinks as she brushes the hair from his forehead. She nips softly at the edges of his throat and he yelps, thrusting himself upon her. That small pain undoes him almost more than the pleasure does, so she sinks her teeth into his shoulder, luxuriating in his howl of pleasure and slurred cries for more. _So weak. Pathetic._

_Gorgeous._

Byleth leans close to Dima’s ear, getting his attention with her teeth at his earlobe. “You pretended to be a predator for years,” Byleth says, shifting just enough to send fresh pleasure through Dima and further dull his already pleasure-shorted mind, “but from the moment I saw you, I knew you were prey.”

That’s when Byleth pulls out of Dima. His weak whine of protest delights her.

Before Dima can get his bearings, she slams her cock back into him, the thrust knocking away whatever threads of conscious thought remain. Her hands notch perfectly into his hips as she fucks him in earnest, the pace fast enough to inflame, but too slow to truly satisfy him, needy knot-slut that he is. Dima wriggles and whimpers weakly beneath her, shaking harder with each thrust of her into his eager hole.

Byleth is no better, as each stroke sends shockwaves of pleasure from her core and throughout her body, tingling from her center to her fingertips as she sinks again and again into the hot, slick core of him. As she takes him, her tongue licks deeper into the contours of his mad-honey mouth as he yields ever more to her.

“What are you?” she growls into his ear, teasing him with shallow, unsatisfying thrusts. He shakes so badly in her arms that he rocks himself half onto her anyway.

“Prey,” Dima sobs, and she rewards him with a deep, hard thrust, her cry of pleasure mingling with his. The power and the sensation are delicious, intoxicating. She understands now why this makes alphas stupid: the wet heat surrounds her magic, fucks her mind and his, the feast made of him for the demon in her veins. “Your prey,” Dima cries aloud, and Byleth presses at his bond gland as she pistons in and out of him. “ _Yours_.”

“Good boy.” Byleth punctuates it with a sharp, quick thrust, grinding on his pleasure points, and revels as he shatters, screaming aloud as she continues to fuck him senseless. His body quakes and roils, gripping her as if she is the only purchase in all of existence, nose buried in her scent gland. His cock spurts across his stomach and Byleth’s, twitching and jerking of its own accord, but even as he finishes his load, he is still hard.

Byleth keeps an even, steady pace even as she scoops his leavings off her stomach and onto her fingers. She puts them to his mouth. “Clean me up.”

Swallowing, he nods and sucks her fingers clean, releasing them with a small whine when Byleth pulls away. She takes a scoop off his stomach and repeats the gesture, this time leaving her fingers for him to suck as she increases her pace. He gropes blindly for his own cock, hands unsteady, but Byleth bats it away. Dima growls in protest, but Byleth clears her throat and he meekly complies. If anything, he smells even sweeter after, as if pleased by her disregard of his pleasure.

Dima’s second orgasm builds to a crescendo as Byleth sets a more brutal pace, fucking him now with wild abandon. Every stroke is smoother, easier than the last, a glove-like fit even as he clenches down on her. Dima yells, overwhelmed by lust as he spills his seed again, and this time without prompting he scoops up his mess and sucks it off his own fingers.

Byleth strokes his hair and smiles. “What a good boy you are,” she says, proud, and he chokes, red-faced, on his cry of “Professor!”

Soon Byleth is the one unable to hold herself back, dragging Dima close as she loses herself in the feel of him around her, the scent of him more intoxicating than any flowering poisoned honey, and she feels her own body shudder as pleasure spirals high and tight from her core and up her spine, making her legs shake as her cock spills into him. Dima holds her steady, the only grip she has left on this world, even as she hears his answering cry to hers. They _break_ together, and in that moment, Byleth is unsure which pieces belong to him and which belong to her. Perhaps it no longer matters.

Byleth feels the swell of the knot before she comes back to herself, the sensation continuing past her orgasm. It’s an odd sensation. The wrung-out feeling is not as intense as it was when she’s played with herself, magical energy redistributing to seal herself inside of him and squeeze even more pleasure from his already-wrecked body. Dima’s breathing has long given up being even or regular, doomed to hitch and sob as the knot’s swell fills him up, and he practically convulses when Byleth repositions herself to press the knot deeper still.

“How do you feel?” Byleth asks, fond.

“Hmmm?” he mumbles, distant and dreamy. Guileless joy under a mess of tears and drool, his own spend at one corner of his mouth.

It’s tempting to let him drift away in something other than misery for once, but she needs him verbal. “Dima,” she says, “I asked you how you felt. Please answer me.”

“ _Full,_ ” Dima breathes.

Good enough.

His shaking hand bats lightly at her face before coming to cup her cheek, guiding her down to his mouth. Less a kiss and more a clumsy press of mouths, Dima’s clench sending pleasure-waves through them both. Byleth experiments with moving again, and Dima sucks a breath in through his teeth.

The press and slide of their bodies traps his cock between them, and the friction prompts Dima to press himself closer to her and deeper onto the knot, thrusting his hips in long and slow waves as their mouths continue to mingle. Dima grips her as his body jerks and shudders, spilling remnants of what’s left in his balls as he rides the knot. At this rate, she’ll come again before he’s done.

He comes yet another time, his cock’s involuntary thrusting eking a few final drops out him, when Byleth decides to take him in hand. The stimulation of his cock so soon after overwhelms him, and he curses breathlessly as his hands press into her hips. Tears escape from beneath the blindfold, and Byleth licks the trail of one, savoring the salt, before sharing the taste with him. He clenches around her, needy and aching, desperate to squeeze a bit more pleasure from her as the magics begin to fade, deflating her knot. His hips cant frantically, as if possessed, even as his hole twitches around her, and then Byleth’s consumed by the pleasure as well, of the glorious stroking and clenching at her core. She fists a hand in his hair and yanks his mouth to hers as he fucks himself upon her. She strokes him, fast and cruel, as one last orgasm sparks bright behind Byleth’s eyelids takes them both.

It’s some time before Byleth comes back to herself. Longer to notice the high-pitched keening noise. Even longer still to grasp it’s coming from Dima.

As the last of the magics dissipate, Byleth struggles into a sitting position, pulling Dima with her. She cuddles him close, murmuring soothing nonsense as she rocks him through that stone-heart-shattering sound.

It’s the sound of Duscur, of Garreg Mach, of having everyone he ever loved ripped away from him twice, of lost pack and lost years and Edelgard’s betrayal and prison guards in a cell and cruel ghosts thirsting for blood and a young rabbit, forced to become a King of Lions, longing for a predator to take him gently by the throat.

“You’re safe, Dima.” As the sound tapers away, Byleth pulls off the blindfold and Dima squinches his leaking eye shut. Chamomile, even through his tears. “You’re so good, sweet boy, you’re beautiful—”

“I’m not, I’m not, I’m sorry, I—”

“Shhhh.” She scratches his head. “We were great.”

Byleth has never believed in perfect things, but she breathes in the chamomile and thinks this moment might be the closest she gets in this life.

Dima quiets and stares at her with such naked adoration that now Byleth is the one unable to look at him.

She reaches for a skin with noa fruit juice, but it’s somewhat out of her reach. When Byleth tries to disentangle herself, Dima protests audibly, his grip still powerful even somewhat reduced from its usual strength. His voice cracks on a sob as he struggles to keep her near.

“I’m right here, sweet boy,” Byleth reassures him, keeping a hand on Dima as she stretches to get the skin. His body rushes to lie in whatever space she evacuates, and Byleth is uncertain if this clinginess is an omega thing, a Dima thing, or some combination of the two.

With a soft tug of his hair, Byleth motions for Dima to sit up again, and his body drapes over her like a fur, his head settling into her scent gland. After taking a long sniff, he smiles softly and drops a kiss upon it. Byleth blinks back tears.

Holding the skin to his mouth, she asks, “Can you drink some for me?”

Dima blinks at her, uncomprehending.

Byleth tries. “Dima, drink as much of this as you can comfortably.”

After a few more moments of hazy confusion, he takes the skin from her and drinks down the entire thing, juice dripping down his chin. When she goes to wipe it away, he licks the juice off her thumb, and Byleth giggles at the ticklish sensation.

She drinks some of the noa juice herself, asking Dima a few more questions about his well-being. He ignores most of them, content to drift, unless Byleth orders him to answer, at which point he’ll dredge up a few words to comply.

So mostly non-verbal, understands and obeys direct orders but not much else. Interesting. She experiments a bit.

“You’re such a sweet boy,” Byleth whispers, and Dima’s body shivers as he drops a tiny moan. He definitely heard that. Byleth is starting to grasp why Dima never had a problem with his presentation. When all of this is over and they rendezvous with Rodrigue, she is going to have a lot of questions for him.

_Questions you’ll have no right to ask,_ her jerk brain reminds her, _and who knows if Dimitri will still be speaking to you by then._

(Her chest does not ache at that thought. Dead hearts don’t do that.)

Dima’s breathing slows, which Byleth takes as her cue to lay back, Dima continuing to nose at her scent gland as he dozes. He shivers again, his body cooling now, so she gropes for something and finds his cloak, pulling it over both their bodies.

Another wave will hit soon enough; they may as well rest before it comes.

(This will all be over soon enough.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~Are you not entertained~~
> 
> [Everyone, SALTORII drew the magic pegging scene and it’s everything I ever dreamed.](https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/83228499#manga) Go check out his twitter account [@SALTORII](https://twitter.com/saltorii?s=21) for more sexy content. (NSFW obviously).
> 
> Note: the decision to have Byleth eschew safe words is based on personal experience in D/s dynamics from both sides of the slash. While they have their use, they are only as good as the partners who use them. Furthermore, "no" and "stop" _are_ safewords unless explicitly negotiated otherwise, and for someone like Dimitri who has serious issues with boundaries, not using safe words can be considered an ideal to live up to instead of a completely necessary communication that keeps _both_ partners safe. The reality is, Dimitri is not a safe person to top at this point in the story, in case you haven't noticed.
> 
> Next up: the fuckery's just begun, children.


	12. twelve (ain't a pill that could touch our rush)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does Byleth know who Dima is without his ghosts? Does Dima even know?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings.** Possessive behavior, but it's (mostly) treated like a sex thing and acknowledged in-story to be a problem.
> 
> Title still from Lorde's [Sober I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvgigkaSCZA). Alternate lyrical cue: "i know the story by heart: jack and jill get fucked up and possessive when it gets dark."
> 
> I am super behind on comments but decided between comment responses and a new chapter you'd pick new chapter. Don't worry, I'm coming around for all of you because y'all are the best fans ever. Anyway this is 100% porn and probably as fluffy as this story gets. Enjoy it while it lasts, children.

When Byleth wakes, everything is _Dima_.

There’s a hum against her collarbone as she wakes, a strong hand splayed over the curve of her hip, chamomile and mad honey and night flowers swirling in her mind as another hand’s fingers card softly through her hair. Soft lips press at her jaw, tender as petals.

Byleth opens her eyes.

Dima is smiling. _Smiling,_ his eye sparkling and his dimples deep as the ocean in his eye. His hands move on her hip and through her hair in a languid rhythm. His scent is chamomile-honey sweet, the bitter notes of his madness and the fragrance of his poison chased away as if waking from a dream.

(That is Byleth’s first hint something might be amiss. Dima’s poison scent is a siren’s call to Byleth, but it is also a warning.)

This feels more like a dream than anything else since Byleth first awakened to her brave new world, but Byleth is loath to break the spell. She reaches up to poke one of his dimples and he leans softly into her touch, desirous without the edge of despair.

“How are you feeling?” Byleth asks.

He pauses, evaluates as if cataloging his body for post-battle aches and pains. “I am terrified of how good I feel,” he admits, still smiling.

It’s more honest than she’s ever heard him. “Why is that?”

Dima ponders the question while tracing patterns along Byleth’s hip. “I don’t have much experience feeling good,” he says, and Byleth squeezes his arm. “Even as a child I was… anxious. Easily overwhelmed. Sensitive, I suppose. Perhaps I would have learned to manage those feelings better had my family not been slaughtered. I wonder if it’s too late to learn?”

If Byleth hadn’t been concerned before, her hackles rise once she hears Dima speak so lightly of Duscur. “You seem different,” she says, neutral.

“Do I?” Dima asks. “That must be the euphoria.”

Byleth blinks. “The euphoria?”

Dima’s smile widens, some magical blend of his old Prince Charming smile and real warmth and joy. _That_ is the most dangerous thing Byleth has ever witnessed. “Sylvie told me a bit about it. After knotting, omegas feel… good. Very good. Blissful. She likened the feeling to the lotus eaters in their dens. It reminds me of the time I smoked hash at that pleasure den, but better.” He closes his eyes and noses her scent gland. “ _Much_ better.”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Byleth’s brain shorts out at that entire last sentence. “When did you go to a pleasure den?”

“How do you think I won the White Heron Cup, Professor?” Dima shoots her a teasing grin, and _who even is he right now_. “I’ll tell you about it sometime. For now… ”

Byleth has kissed Dima, but Dima has really never kissed her. When Dima kisses her now, it’s less kiss and more invitation, teasing and plying at Byleth’s lips softly as enticement. He grins against her mouth, and Byleth hesitates.

Now that she isn’t fighting off dumb alpha brain, Byleth’s mind lingers over the startling shift in his demeanor. Every version of Dimitri that Byleth has known dwells in heavy shadows. Does Byleth know who Dima is without his ghosts? Does Dima even know?

And yet… isn’t this what she wants for Dima? To see him standing in the sun, happy and confident enough to meet his destiny without breaking under its weight? Who is she to say this is less Dimitri than the anxious, lonely prince or the vengeful, tormented man lurking in the cathedral?

So Byleth kisses him back, her tongue prodding at the part of his lips, and he opens for her easily, so easily. This she recognizes; this she remembers. Even with him above her it’s he who softens, he who melts as her tongue winds around his, sucks the air from his lungs and claims it for her own. His moan of pleasure vibrates through her as his lid flutters shut, and the vicious thing that wants wants _wants_ inside Byleth stirs awake.

Pulling back despite Dima’s protesting whine, Byleth asks, “Do you need to be knotted, sweet boy?”

Dima answers with a sly smile. “Always.”

Byleth raises an eyebrow and he flushes, coughing. “I have some time.”

“Good.” Byleth pulls Dima down and kisses him properly.

It’s good, it’s so _good_ , smoke cleared and blood washed away and all that remains is the honey promising madness and it’s _good_ the way the weight of him presses her into the fur and it’s _good_ the way his mouth shivers with the rest of him as her nails score his back and it’s _good_ the way his fingers dig into her hips as if they’re all that keeps him from drowning and it’s _good_ it’s _good_ it’s so very very _good_.

His sounds when her nails dig into him are beautiful. She wants to keep them, guard them jealously. She wants to keep _him,_ guard _him_ jealously, keep him as the yearning needy thing he becomes in her arms instead of the unhinged instrument of vengeance he’s fashioned himself into for the dead. Already his hips grind against her, desperate for any friction on the cock that’s trapped between them.

She kisses him and it’s _good_.

Dima’s hands move freely over the swell of her breasts and arc of her hips. Byleth shivers when he touches the tender space between her shirt and shorts. “May I… ?” Dima trails off, tugging lightly at her top.

She pauses. It’s not as if she hasn’t shown him, but… “Let me do it?”

“Of course.” He nods at her, sitting back on his haunches.

Somehow it’s harder this time than before. More revealing, and not because she undoes her breast band as well. He still takes a wet breath when the wound in her is revealed.

“Does it… ?” Dima vaguely gestures with a thrusting motion.

Byleth nods. “Clean through.”

Abruptly Dima reaches for Byleth, his boundless strength no match for hers when caught off-guard. Byleth squeaks in shock, unused to the manhandling. Dima places her down on her stomach.

Rough, callused fingers trail over the raw edges of her, and something deeper than wounds cracks at his touch. Murder virtuoso that he is, Dima knows what a wound like this should have done. “You died.”

Byleth twists back to look at Dima, and the smile has left his face. “I got better.”

His eye tightens shut. Byleth flips herself over and takes his face in her hands. His breathing is a sharp staccato; it’s a wonder that any air reaches his lungs with all the blood in his scent. “Hey. Look at me. Did you really think I’d let a scratch stop me from keeping my promise to you?”

“A scratch,” he laughs in disbelief, shaking his head. “You call that a _scratch._ ”

So there’s a giant glowing gash through her body. Big deal. Byleth can’t take it too seriously. She’s got a war to run and a mad omega prince and no time to deal with a giant glowing gash. Besides, what’s a giant glowing gash to a heartless woman?

Dima sucks in a sharp, soggy breath. For a moment Byleth worries they’ll have a repeat of last night’s meltdown, but then Dima emerges victorious from whatever internal battle he was waging. “You’re right.” He smiles, tremulous but deep-dimpled. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

Then, “ _Please_.”

Byleth feels exactly the same way.

They slide together with surprising ease. Dima’s legs part wide and easy, the slick already heavy enough to make entering him easier yet. Byleth winds her arms around his neck and Dima puts all superhuman strength to good use clinging to her as she moves inside him, his legs wrapped around Byleth tightly as chains. Every movement punches the air from her lungs, scalds her with the incandescent pain-pleasure of being inside him.

When she comes, her knot sparking white-hot as it swells inside him, Byleth mouths Dima’s scent gland and she’s not sure who’s moaning louder. She bites a hole in her tongue to keep herself from… from going over the line.

Later, when they’re lying in each other’s arms, Byleth tells him, “I lived, and so did you.”

It’s a long time before Dima replies. “So we did,” he murmurs, voice full of wonder.

* * *

It’s in another of the intervals between sex and exhaustion, those liminal spaces where the frenzy has been sated and they can simply _be_ , that Byleth revisits the revelation from earlier.

“So,” Byleth begins in the most casual tone she can manage while Dima is flipped over on his stomach, showing off that pert, pert butt of his, “you went to a pleasure den.”

Dima turns back and gives her a cheeky grin. “I did.” He’s so proud it’s absurd.

“To win the White Heron Cup.”

“It was effective, was it not? Thanks to the lesson I received there, I swept the competition.” He wriggles his butt and it’s so adorable Byleth itches to smack it. Best she refrain for now; Byleth is wary of exploring Dima’s masochistic tendencies when so much of psyche loops back into self-loathing.

“You did,” and Byleth smiles at the memory. An impulsive choice on her part, but totally worth it to see him in that costume. Even with Seteth’s death glare and Alois’s vaguely uncomfortable expression as a judge. “Still, it’s… bolder than I would have expected.”

Dima pouts. “Do you question my bravery?”

In battle? Never.

In dance? “Absolutely.”

He deflates, chastened, but tips his head at her in guilty concession. “I might not have had the courage to speak to the dancers at all were it not for Claude.”

_What._

Byleth blinks. Great ass is still there, but so’s a glint of mischief in Dima’s eye.

“You went to a pleasure den… with Claude.” Saying it out loud doesn’t help.

“Sylvain and Dorothea made the arrangements,” and Byleth can’t believe those two traitors never told her about this, “but they… wandered away, so he was my companion for much of the evening.”

With _Claude._

Should Byleth be jealous? Dima did call Claude ‘pretty’ earlier, and it’s true, Claude is quite pretty, especially for an alpha. Did Dima want a ”normal” alpha with ruts and a sultry scent? Or did he want a trueborn noble, someone human, someone who doesn’t chat with dead gods and bear giant glowing gashes in their stomach?

“I appreciated his assistance. Claude made sure I received quite the informative lesson—”

Byleth has her hips straddling Dima’s and her hands at his beautifully-bared throat before she can even process she’s moved. His mouth parts with surprise and Byleth’s mouth goes dry imagining all the things she can do to press herself onto him.

“You’re _mine,_ ” Byleth snarls in Dima’s face.

“Yours,” Dima agrees, quick and breathless.

“You belong to _me._ ”

“I do!” He practically chokes on the words, but then even more tumble out with it. “I’m yours, I’m yours, I’m _yours…_ ”

Byleth is about to say more extremely stupid things (words like _claim_ and _breed_ ) when she catches her thoughts and almost gasps aloud in horror. What is _wrong_ with her? Why is she flying off the handle at the thought of a night out five years ago? She’s about to apologize to Dima for her behavior when she gets a look at his face.

Dima is, for lack of a better term, _blissed out,_ the euphoria and scent spike secondary to the sheer overwhelming ecstasy of hearing Byleth grunt like some pea-brained rutting alpha. He’s even _wetter_ somehow than he was a few hours ago, and his scent is the most incredible honeyed poison blend. Byleth is mildly confident licking him right now would _kill_ her, but it would be an awesome death.

Oh, _right._ She forgot this is _Dima,_ who used to pretend he wasn’t glaring whenever Byleth shared meals with Claude or Edelgard and still hisses like a cat at the mere mention of Dorothea. She once accompanied the Golden Deer to Gloucester territory at Lorenz’s request and Dima sulked for _three days,_ destroying nearly every dummy in the training hall, and holy shit Byleth cannot believe it took them _six years_ to fuck.

If they somehow get through this heat intact, Byleth needs to have a long conversation with Dima about his mile-wide possessive streak. (Because hers is so much better.) In the meantime, Byleth doesn’t intend to wait another six years for him. Or even six minutes.

She hooks Dima’s legs over her shoulders as she warms him up, the magics practically manifesting inside him before she gets the chance to thrust in herself. She’s ready to start thrusting at a far more brutal pace than before when she catches Dima’s eye, the mischievous sparkle hiding there, the heady scent of his anticipation.

Whatever Dima sees or smells off Byleth, his smile drops and his eye widens anxiously, even as his scent grows sweeter.

Byleth scrounges up a hair tie from her discarded shorts pocket and knots it around the base of his cock. Instead of the fast fuck he wanted, he gets Byleth at her most patient and heartless, teasing him with slow, shallow thrusts that keep him on edge but never permits him to tip over. Byleth pulls out and strokes herself to near-completion, only entering at the very last moment. Her knot inflates inside him without Dima having the pleasure of spilling to completion, and that makes the pressure even more overwhelming inside him. She can’t help but laugh a bit when he tries to move his hips to get more stimulation and can’t quite angle himself right.

Normally Byleth doesn’t like seeing Dima cry, but watching him sob with frustration is a solid exception to the rule.

“Who owns you?” Byleth demands as he weeps so prettily for her.

His answer is garbled and Byleth remembers she shoved her fingers in his mouth again to keep him from saying anything else stupid.

“You do,” he says through his tears, “you’re my alpha, it’s you, it’s you… “

“No one else?”

Dima looks so genuinely distraught at that question that Byleth, satisfied, releases the hair-tie, and he floods his stomach and chest with his pent-up seed.

After they clean up, Dima curls himself around her body, hugging Byleth to him as if she were a child’s stuffed toy. She can feel him smiling into her hair, even as he falls back asleep.

 _Mine,_ Byleth thinks as he drifts in her arms.

_(Untrue.)_

* * *

Dima’s next heatwave crests before he awakens. The rising honey-sweet scent of him pulls Byleth from sleep. It surprises her. She’s a heavy sleeper, and he is anything but. As she drifts back to the surface, she hears his soft, slurred cries as her nose fills with his scent.

“Alpha,” Dima murmurs into her neck, his breath hot and sharp against her skin. “Please.”

Oh.

Huh.

 _That’s_ interesting.

His cock ruts against her thigh, remnant slick smoothing away the friction. His brow furrows as he tries to get enough sensation to sate himself.

Byleth’s soft side is tempted to let him keep humping her leg, if it will allow him to sleep for a while longer. He needs every second he can steal from his accursed dead. Her rational mind says it would be best to wake him and find out what he wants.

The alpha in her doesn’t give a damn beyond the _Alpha_ on his lips.

Already the magics coalesce at her core, but Byleth wills them back for now. She smooths a bit of the hair from his face, studying his expression. His head turns into the motions of her hand, seeking the extra contact. Needy, greedy omega.

She presses her thumb to his scent gland and his mouth pops open with a soft whine. Digging in her finger, she carefully slides her body out from beneath him. She concentrates on keeping her scent even and reassuring, let them envelop him in the reminder she’s still present. Slowly he lowers himself back onto the furs of his nest, and he curls up around himself.

 _Next heat,_ she thinks, dangerous a thought as it is, _there will be a down mattress with furs and velvets piled a foot high, and silk pillows everywhere._ She’ll build the damn thing herself if she has to, conventions be damned.

Dima’s back is even more of a wreck than his front, old burn scars girding a litany of slash, puncture, and incised wounds. Byleth spots three arrow wounds offhand, with at least one broadhead torn carelessly from his upper arm. Little care was taken to heal these injuries. There’s no way that much angry, knotted scar tissue isn’t painful and hampering his movement, but getting him to submit to deep-tissue healing is a problem for another time. For now, it’s just another reminder why she’s throttling back her darker impulses.

Byleth drops a kiss on the broadhead scar, willing down the rage that accompanies the sight. Whoever did this, she hopes they died slowly.

How dare they mark what’s _hers_.

She runs her tongue down his spine and Dima stirs, panting softly as her hand snakes around his front and toys with a taut pink nipple. As she drags her nails over the bud, he moans for her, eyes still shut but body tightening in anticipation. His hips buck just a bit into her. She lifts her other hand, scratching his scalp, and he practically purrs as his body melts into the furs.

“You’re awake, aren’t you?” Byleth murmurs into his ear, nipping at the lobe, and her answer is a half-smile and the warm flush of his skin.

Very well, let him play the sleeping beauty. He’s more than pretty enough to warrant fighting off dragons.

Byleth’s fingers drift lower down his abdomen, tracing the toned muscle rather than the too-prominent ribs or ragged scars. His face tightens as he pushes into her hand, but another scratch of his scalp settles him down, softly mewling as she continues.

Oh, she _likes_ him like this. The King of Lions reduced to a helpless kitten. It’s doing things to Byleth that can’t be healthy or smart.

When her wandering hand finally finds his cock, his breath hitches in time with each stroke. It’s quite a specimen, especially compared to her hands. An image flickers across her mind of Dima blindfolded and leashed before a room of alphas, her hand on his leash as she puts them all to shame with her omega’s proud, jutting cock. Amusing to imagine him fucking another omega with it, or, even more wickedly, fucking an _alpha_ with it. Byleth rubs her legs together, squirming at the thought.

Based on the way Dima grinds his ass against her cunt, however, Byleth gathers that he can’t be satisfied with only his cock any longer. Biting her cheek, Byleth finally releases her grip on the magics that ache to reform, and the gleaming jade cock slides between his thighs, moving effortlessly as fresh slick smooths her path. Her cock glides over the sensitive spot behind his balls and he yelps, eyes fluttering open as he turns to look at her.

Byleth chuckles at his expression. His cheeks are scarlet red, but his lid is still heavy and the expression beneath it glazed. She pushes again, and the tiny cry of pleasure sends him crashing back to the ground.

“I’ll bet,” Byleth says, “that I could slide myself into you in one thrust.”

Dima hums softly. “What do I get when I lose?” He’s still slurring from half-sleep, and she grins wickedly.

“What do you want, sweet boy?” Byleth’s breath is hot on his jaw.

Something bright and painful flickers in his eye, gone before she can place it; a burst of pure chamomile comes and fades with it, honey in its wake.

“Do what you wish with me.” Dima’s head falls back to the nest.

Byleth has heard that before. The words feel truer now, or maybe Byleth recognizes how much truth sat beneath them then and now. Dimitri was and is an honest liar, twisting the truth beyond recognition and twisting it back around to sound genuine and true. He’s holding something back, no question, but Byleth won’t press.

Instead she follows through on her question, snapping herself into him with one quick, solid thrust, and she sits up to watch how his eye rolls back as he cries aloud, mouth gaping open as the sensation overtakes him. Byleth takes the opportunity to slide an arm beneath him and pop two fingers in his mouth, delighting in how eagerly his lips seal around them, suckling eagerly as her hips cant her into his needy hole. His eyelid slides shut, lost in the pulsing pleasure and slapping flesh of her fucking him.

It’s so _good,_ fucking him this way, _using_ him this way, as if he existed solely for her pleasure. Though he gives way to her easily, once she’s inside him, he clamps down tight around her, and the squeeze is almost painful in the pleasure it sends ricocheting through her. She could lose herself in this so easily, force his face onto the ground and rut him like a mindless animal, but she won’t.

Dima’s hands fist around one another, refusing to venture to his cock, and it makes her smile. Byleth lays her free hand atop his. “You take me so well, don’t you?” Byleth asks, and he moans around her fingers, nodding frantically. “Such a _good_ omega.”

The praise sends him over the edge, and suddenly he’s bucking his hips back into Byleth as hard she’s thrusting into him, the clashing motions sending her cock directly into his most sensitive spot. He smacks the ground so hard as he comes that Byleth thinks she hears cracks form in the floor, and she slaps her hand over his mouth to muffle his screaming. As he spills across the ground, she thrusts into him with even greater force, pulling his hips in close to keep him from escaping.

As the orgasm runs its course, each time she presses into him he jerks as if burned, tears leaking from his eye at the overstimulation. The deep flower-honey notes of his scent drive her on despite his keening, chamomile bright and steady, but when she hears something that sounds like words, she uncovers his mouth.

“Alpha,” Dima babbles, “ _Alpha_.” He chants it like a prayer.

 _Alpha._ There it is again.

It’s too much to resist, and Byleth squeezes her eyes shut as the pleasure thunder-strikes her nerves, whiting out her vision as she spends into him. “You’re so beautiful,” she grits out before her voice is lost to her own screaming overload.

 _Alpha_.

Her knot inflating in him feels so perfect, the crush of him wringing new shocks of pleasure out of her. Byleth dimly realizes she’s shaking nearly as hard as Dima as he orgasms again, his screams half-wretched from the overload on his mind and body. She wraps her arms around him tightly as he cries and keens through it, pleasure so intense it’s twisted into a sort of torture. Still he cries _Alpha_ brokenly, his sobbing relenting to a soft, stuttering hiccough as he falls limp in her arms, still tightly held into place by her knot.

_Alpha._

Alphas are alphas, but _Alpha_ is a gift. Pet names often develop between alphas and omegas, but _Alpha_ is used almost exclusively by omegas who have been claimed by their alphas. Even then, many omegas loathe using _Alpha_ as an honorific.

Because _Alpha_ denotes possession, ownership. Belonging. More independent omegas might liken an omega using _Alpha_ to the way a slave uses _Master_. Felix or Dorothea would spit in the face of any alpha who suggested it. Hilda would use it as a joke. Mercedes would politely avoid titles entirely. Ashe would politely demur. It’d be cruel to ask of Bernadetta.

_Do whatever you wish with me._

Her lungs seize.

Byleth strokes Dima’s hair, and he worms beside her, chasing more sensation even as his body’s collapsed from it. Greedy thing. Knot slut. She adores him.

“So I’m ‘Alpha’ to you, am I?” she asks.

He tenses in her arms. “D-do you mind?”

She knows that voice. That’s an old voice, a voice from the boy trying to hide his desperate longing for kindness, attention, belonging. That voice breaks her heart.

Strange. Byleth is not and will never be an alpha. Not the way this world wants her to be. She thinks, however, she could be _Dima’s_ alpha, and that might be good enough.

“No.” She traces circles in his hip as she snaps her hips forward. “I like it.”

 _Chamomile and honey_ , Byleth thinks as the tension melts from his body and he nestles in her arms. The smile on Dima's face is the most dazzling yet, ecstatic with the knowledge he's _hers._

_(For now.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: I wasn't kidding when I said y'all would be well fed ~~but what will we do when we're sober?~~.
> 
> P.S. Remember how I've been saying there'll be a prequel? It'll be about that time Sylvain took Dimitri to Ye Olde Strip Clubbe with Dorothea and Claude was there too, it'll make sense in context.


	13. thirteen (but what will we do when we're sober?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want to know what to expect,” Byleth says. Calm, neutral. “From you. From the ghosts.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular warnings for this chapter besides the ongoing ones for Dimitri's mental health, which takes a bit of a dip here.
> 
> Chapter title yet again from Lorde's [Sober I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvgigkaSCZA). Alternate chapter title from [The Louvre](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQkdwymDanE): 'they'll hang us in the Louvre (down the back, but who cares, still the Louvre),' or 'broadcast the boom-boom-boom and make them all dance to it,' or really most of The Louvre could've worked here. ~~Y'all should stream Melodrama. Or at least check the lyrics.~~
> 
> We've broken 450 kudos and I am still in awe from all of your amazing support ~~and increasingly panicked comments~~. A big thank you to all of you for sticking with me through this, and I hope you'll trust me to get these two a good place. ~~Eventually.~~

When Byleth knots Dima for the seventh time, it occurs to her that she's in rut.

She’s facing him again, one of his legs hooked over her shoulder. Every time she decides she’ll knot him from behind this time, he’ll make some pretty face or lovely noise, Byleth winds up on top so she can hoard every last one in her memory. She likes being able to reassure him with a smile or a soft pat to his head (or even a scratch behind his ears like the kitten he is).

Sothis help her, but she’s a romantic.

Byleth teases Dima’s cock with one hand and her fingers yet again are in his mouth. It’s a bit predictable, but it seems a shame to leave his gorgeous mouth empty. Based on the ecstasy in his eye when he sucks on her digits, she thinks Dima agrees. Also that she might have accidentally given him an oral fixation.

It’s his cock that does it. His cock really is a spectacular example of its kind, to the extent Byleth is almost wary of riding it, though she’s taken larger with some patience. Now all she can think about is how utterly wasted that cock is on her pretty omega. Incredible to Byleth that anyone believed him to be an alpha when his blissful face proves he was _born_ to be fucked and filled.

“Alpha,” he murmurs around her fingers, and Byleth thinks, _this must be what rut feels like._

And… _oh._

_Duh._

Byleth is in rut, and likely has been for some time. She’s been breathing in heat scents for days on end, and they’re so thick now she’s practically inhaling clouds of lust, punched up with breathy pleas for his Alpha to satisfy him. Meanwhile, she’s been able to summon the magics necessary with little effort, fucking him deep and long, again and again, until she can barely tell where she ends and he begins. Her sexual rapaciousness, the overwhelming protective urges, her possessive streak’s sudden kick into overdrive—all attributable to her body experiencing its first-ever reactive rut.

Now her inability to use her divine pulse makes sense. The magic is feeding the rut triggered by his heat.

It’s… a relief, somewhat, to name and know what’s happening. Byleth hasn’t been able to shake the occasional feeling that her body is acting in ways her mind knows better than to permit. Rut must be driving those impulses, and now that she knows, she can control herself.

_Like you were controlling your impulses before?_

She shoves the thought aside. It’s different. Now she knows.

This time, when Byleth knot dissolves and she falls back onto Dima, both breathless and shaking, she fights the urge to sleep on his chest until the next round. Time to assert some control.

They both need energy, so she’ll grab rations for herself and the last of the stock for Dima. After that, sponge bath. They’ve done basic cleanup after each session but not much else, too exhausted or consumed with one another to bother. Washing will calm them both down, reduce the heatwave intensity. Rut and heat magics tend to self-perpetuate, the scents exciting alphas and omegas to produce more magics in response, which can speed the heatwave cycle and _ohhhh,_ that’s what caused his heat intensity to spike.

How long _has_ she been rutting?

Irrelevant now. She knows, and she will do something.

So Byleth sits up, against Dima’s weak protests. He tries to sit up with her, but a wave of dizziness keeps him on his back. “Where are you going, Alpha?” he mumbles, already half-asleep.

“I’m just getting something for us to eat, Dima,” Byleth replies. When he doesn’t look entirely convinced, Byleth sings the least-filthy tavern ditty that comes to mind, and that seems to do the trick. (For a man who kills dozens of trained soldiers without breaking a sweat, his secondhand embarrassment at bawdy tavern songs is profound.)

“I am hungry,” he mumbles when Byleth returns to his side. Rather than accept the stock and wineskin she offers him, however, Dima reaches for Byleth, pulling her down beside him easily as one finger traces the edges of her nipple.

Byleth shudders, surprised. Usually they aren’t this sensitive. Is this the rut as well?

She lets him play with her breasts a moment more, enjoying the light, shivery shocks of pleasure that come from his touch, before disengaging. “Eat.”

Dima pleads silently with her, eye gleaming and mouth pouting. _Note to self: puppy-dog eyes still work with only one eye._

Then his gaze drops back to her chest and he gets distracted, and his mouth is warm and wet at the corner of her jaw—

“ _Eat,_ ” Byleth snaps in her best Alpha Voice, whose existence she just discovered but bears a greater-than-passing resemblance to her Professor Voice. Dima shudders and accepts the stock and wineskin, eating with mechanical gusto as she watches. Byleth polishes off one of the sandwiches Ashe brought her. It’s tasty, although not as spicy as Byleth prefers. Only Dedue ever made food spicy enough for her.

What would Dedue think if he saw them now? She gazes at Dima, seemingly content as he drinks down the wine, his shoulder pressed into hers. Would Dedue understand? Would he be happy for them? Or would he be bracing for what lurks around the corner?

“You’ve that look again.” Dima bumps her shoulder with his.

Byleth sighs. Dima wants her to open up to him the way she did five years ago, first in bits and pieces, then like a dam breaking after her dad died. Only, as he has been the first to remind her, it’s _not_ five years ago, and the Dima she trusted with her pain collapsed under the weight of his own. The last few times she’s tried, he hasn’t reacted well. Much as it hurts to admit, he can’t be that person for her now.

Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that has to be okay, because Byleth doesn’t see an alternative.

She settles for scratching his head, and he falls back onto her, his face again in her scent gland. He’s quiet as he noses at the gland, breathing a deep sigh of contentment. Byleth strokes his hair. “You’re a good omega.”

If only it could always be like this.

“I’m not a good omega,” he whispers into her shoulder. “I know I’m not. I’m too big, too broken, too monstrous—”

“Don’t speak that way about my omega unless you want to be punished,” Byleth quips, but by the way Dima’s eye lights up and his skin flushes hotter against her, that threat wasn’t the disincentive she’d meant it to be. She files that away for the future.

Then Byleth blinks and shakes her head because _what future?_ She has no idea what happens two days from now, when the magic recedes and they’re themselves again.

Dima fastens his arms around her, as if sensing the direction of Byleth’s thoughts. There’s a whiff of blood and sour fruit. Byleth wishes she could soothe him better, that the outside world didn’t keep crowding her mind. Maybe if she…

 _…nope._ Byleth refuses to even acknowledge that thought.

“We need to rinse off,” Byleth announces, pulling Dima to his feet. Washing off excess scent will help. It will clear her thoughts so she can make a plan to minimize the fallout.

“Why?” Dima whines, burying his face in her hair. “You smell so good, Alpha.” Then he freezes, shrinking back into himself, even as he holds her tighter. The sour note makes Byleth’s nose scrunch. “Does my scent not please you?”

Byleth tries not to scream. She’s just spent the entire last day fucking him senseless and _that’s_ where his mind goes? “You smell amazing,” she promises him, and the sour note dissipates with a burst of rhododendron-infused honey. “It’s too good. That’s why.”

She can tell by the wrinkle in his forehead that Dima’s not following her logic, but in fairness, he’s too blissed out right now for logic. He’s content to let her pull him towards the water buckets, wobbling a bit before leaning into her. After warming the water with a fire spell, she hands him a sponge and a bar of soap. “Wash yourself.”

Dima pauses. The playful look is back in his eye, and that spells more trouble.

“I could wash you, if you’d like.” Dima averts his gaze, shy. Playing the ingenue now despite the filthy things they’ve done. Incredible.

She considers his offer. Dima feels safe enough to tease her, to bargain with her. It’s something Byleth wants to encourage. Her nascent alpha instincts will survive some ruffling. “Wash yourself first, and I’ll let you wash me.”

“Yes, Alpha.” He’s all meek obedience as he dips the sponge into the warm water.

This turns out to be an _enormous_ miscalculation.

For someone who squawked and wailed all through being chosen for the White Heron Cup, Dima sure puts that knowledge to good use now, especially whatever he learned at that pleasure den. As he moves the sponge over his body, he moves with a smooth grace, drawing in her gaze, and Byleth traces one rivulet of water that collects in the nestle of curls at his crotch, then another, and another. He’s clearly following the letter of her order as he drags enticing lines over his body with the soap of the sponge, but given how much stronger his scent gets as he washes the planes of his chest, he is most certainly not following its spirit. When he kneels down to soap his legs, he makes certain his butt is fully facing her, peeking back to gauge her reaction.

It’s ridiculous that Byleth is biting her lips and clearing her dry throat over this… show. She should not be mesmerized by that one droplet nestling perfectly in his— _tease_. Never mind that Byleth would already have slammed him against the wall if her magics weren’t still recovering from the last knotting.

“Don’t forget your hair,” Byleth says, trying not to squirm. Maybe she will end up riding him before this heat is over.

Dima picks up the soap and hands it to her. “Could you please get my back, Alpha?” he asks in the sweetest, most earnest voice possible. Needy little shit.

What exactly did they _teach_ him at that pleasure den? Growling, Byleth snaps up the soap bar and scrubs Dima’s back, kneading the tight muscles there as she goes. She’s been so intent on fucking him into the ground that she’s barely had time to appreciate the beautifully-sculpted muscle beneath the scar tissue. Not a ruin. A masterpiece, just a bit… vandalized. Still a masterpiece, _her_ masterpiece. Byleth’s hands are heavy and harsh as they work over his back, and Dima’s breathing quickens to short, wispy huffs as his muscles loosen from the rough handling. He seems content to walk himself into his trap.

The sponge crosses back onto the front as if of its own volition, but she has no one to blame but herself the first time it drags over his thighs and circles around his cock. Dima’s full-body shake almost knocks him off his feet, and Byleth’s arm wraps over his abdomen to keep him on his feet. He sags into her with a grateful moan. The closer she comes to his cock, the more Dima trembles and sighs in her arms, and Byleth grins as he plunges into a trap of his own design.

It’s delightful, seeing how sensitive he is, how quickly he becomes a desperate, writhing mess under her hands. She nips his shoulder and he sobs aloud as his knees buckle, leaving Byleth to gently maneuver them both to the ground. He leans his head back, and she drops a kiss on the corner of his mouth before digging her nails into one of his nipples. Dima’s hiss of pain-pleasure is gorgeous.

His performance makes Byleth’s mouth more daring. “I barely touch you and already you’re a mess for me,” Byleth teases, dragging her nails along the wetness of his thigh. She can smell the sweet-fruit scent of his slick along with the fresh soap. “What a slut you are for me.”

Dima freezes, and Byleth holds herself still even as some frantic part of her screams at her to apologize, beg his forgiveness for any harm she’s caused by daring too much. Then his happy sob of pleasure vanquishes every bit of anxiety. “I am,” he confesses in breathy tones, half shame, and half wicked delight. “I’m _your_ knot slut, Professor. _Alpha_. I’ve always been. Do what you wish with me, _please_.”

She wonders, idly, how long ‘always’ is, but she’s not sure she’s ready for the answer. As Byleth washes his cock, Dima leans into the touch, desperate, eager. He gestures to where she’s washing him. “Does it disgust you?” Dima asks in an unsteady voice. “I know it’s ungainly for an omega to be… ”

 _Large._ Male omegas are supposed to be delicate, like Felix or Ashe, but Dima’s a masterpiece. They’ll start a new fashion together. He wouldn’t believe her now, but he’ll see it someday. Perhaps after she watches him fuck an alpha. Claude would look damn good with Dima inside… she’s getting ahead of herself.

So instead Byleth answers, “Mine’s bigger,” concealing her smile.

Dima says nothing for a moment. Then he throws his head back and laughs so hard he snorts. Byleth laughs with him, caught up in his joy. His feelings were always so much bigger than hers; it’s a wonder he contains them at all.

“So it is.” Laughter keeps bubbling up and spilling out the corners of his mouth. Byleth can’t help it; she kisses up his jaw, running her tongue along the shell of his ear.

He twists in her arms, his face adoring as he faces her. Dima’s still damp from washing, but he shakes himself off like a wet dog, and Byleth shrieks as she cringes away from the water droplets.

“My turn now.” Dima sweeps Byleth up and tosses her over his shoulder, carrying her back to his nest as if she weighed no more than a bag of feathers.

“Dima!” Byleth tries to sound angry, but there’s a breathless quality to her voice from his wicked smile and easy grip on her. “Put me down, now!”

“Yes, Alpha.” He grins as he plops her back into the nest, his heavy weight settling comfortably on her. Then he pulls back, only to gently bring his tongue along the edge of her collarbone.

“What are you doing?” He kisses a wet, sloppy line up and down the column of her throat. “You’re supposed to wash me!”

“I am washing you.” He smirks and brings his mouth to one of her rosy nipples. “A tongue bath is a bath, no?”

“That is not— _oh._ ” Byleth’s thoughts stop in their tracks when he takes her nipple in his mouth. He’s gentle at first, teasing the tip with his tongue in a maddening way, before licking around it like sherbert. Byleth squeaks at the pleasure, and she spots a satisfied gleam in his eye. He brings his other hand to her neglected nipple, gently tweaking it to her shocked surprise, and he begins sucking in earnest at the other. Heat’s pooling between her legs, throbbing as those soft sparks of pleasure build up at her nipples. Byleth bites back a moan.

Dima releases the nipple and breathes heavily upon her breast, the warm rush of air making her tingle. “Does it feel good?” His voice is soft, shy despite his audacious actions. “I want you to feel the way you’ve made me feel.”

Byleth huffs, shaky as she chuckles. “It feels _very_ good.”

Dima licks his way down her stomach, breath an inferno on her already-heated skin, before pausing at her scar. He kisses the scar, then runs his tongue along it, the gesture less that of a lover’s and more that of a frightened animal trying to heal a mate’s wound. A gentle pat of his head is all he needs to recall himself, however, and he continues down her body before settling between her thighs. Glancing back at her with a pleading eye, he says, “May I, Alpha?”

She nods, shaky. Byleth wasn’t sure he’d be interested in…

… oh holy fuck, Dima is _definitely_ interested.

He takes to her cunt like a starving man, loose and sloppy licking that speaks more of enthusiasm than experience, but it’s hot and lovely, and Byleth finds herself grinding into his mouth, focusing her mind to process the explosion of sensation that comes from his passionate tonguing. Someone gave him tips, so he knows not to go immediately to her clit, but by the time he makes it there her legs are already shaking and kicking.

It takes Dima a bit to find her rhythm, Byleth finally gripping his hair in her hands and directing his head as if he were a puppet, but with that bit of training he sucks on her clit well enough to feel the pleasure like a lance from her core to her neck, the intensity making her so lightheaded that her face and fingers buzz with it. Byleth screams, long and loud, as she comes, but Dima does not relent, content to keep going even as her thighs clamp around both sides of his head.

Turnabout’s fair play, she supposes, her thoughts already being wiped away with his tongue. His moans rise with her cries until she’s not entirely sure who’s pleasuring whom. Dima keeps his pace through another brain-shattering peak, and as a third wave begins to build, she feels _him_ sobbing and shaking into her cunt.

Did Dima just come by eating her out?

_Hot._

His face gleams with her juices. “I can keep going,” Dima says, more sheepish than eager. He knows he’s been caught. “I knew I would enjoy this with you.”

“You, uh,” she pauses for a shiver, “thought about that a lot?”

Dima’s face somehow turns even redder. “I… yes? Almost as much as I thought of you… ”

He makes a series of motions that do not resemble yet somehow convey being taken from behind, and Byleth busts out laughing. Dima, caught between embarrassment and pleasure at her laugh, eventually chimes in as well.

Byleth wraps her arms around his neck, and Dima’s eye flutters shut. He’s so _good_ , even if this is just heat-induced euphoria. A bolt of pain goes through her chest when she remembers this won’t last. Whatever happens when the heat is over, he will not be the same.

Right now, though, he’s hers, and Byleth wants to be here with him.

“You did well for the first time. You always were a fast learner,” Byleth says, “and I anticipate you’ll be an attentive student.” The soft shiver and hiccup at her praise make her want to drag his mouth back to her cunt, but she wants that last comment to knock around his head a little. Dima will clearly make himself a slut for her approval, but he needs to work for it a little, or he’ll tell himself it’s empty flattery. Eventually though, well… she’s already adding several variants of Dima eating her out to her fantasy loop. The Archbishop’s desk is big enough to put him underneath.

In the meantime, Byleth can feel her magic recovering, and Dima’s cheek is hot against her palm as his expression glazes over with rising heat. Time to satisfy her omega again.

* * *

It’s after… Byleth’s lost count, but she’s collapsed in his arms like he’s her wildest dreams come alive and he’s collapsed in hers like she’s his forgiveness and salvation and…

… and then what?

“Professor?” He runs his fingers through her hair. Sour fruit. “I know something has been troubling you. Whatever it is, please allow me to ease your mind, if I can.”

_You really can’t, and that’s the problem._

Blood and chamomile. His movements become jerky, erratic. “Is this about Jeralt? I am sorry I snapped at you. I find during heats it is best not to permit the dead to enter my thoughts much, lest I summon them. Forgive me, I should have explained, but I was… ”

_Exactly._

_Wait. What?_ Did Dima just suggest that one of his ghosts is her… ? Byleth sucks a breath through her teeth. Not the time to fall down that misery hole.

Focus. Prioritize. “What happens… after?”

Dima’s hand stops, and Byleth wheezes as he nearly chokes the air out of her lungs with rot. When he remembers himself, she gulps in greedy lungfuls of air, almost coughing from the blood and death. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Lie.

“I want to know what to expect,” Byleth says. Calm, neutral. “From you. From the ghosts.”

His face tilts away from her. “My mind hasn’t been this quiet in years. Must you invite them back to haunt me?”

That’s… fair, in one sense. There has been so little joy in his life, rarer still joy that Dima permits himself to savor. Byleth doesn’t want to spoil this moment any more than Dima wants her to spoil it.

_And yet._

When Dima falls apart again, it will be Byleth who will pick up the pieces, because that’s what she does, and that’s what everyone else expects of her. This time those pieces will be razor-sharp as they slice her ungloved hands; she will be barefoot as she walks over the glass shards of him and her and them. She deserves to know.

“With all due respect, Professor—”

“Byleth.” For this conversation, she can’t be his professor or his alpha.

Dima throws his arm over his eye. “With all due respect, _Byleth,_ ” Dima says, and Byleth can smell the blood in her name, the intense discomfort of addressing her not as a distant authority figure, but as an equal who is raw and present and brittle in her own ways, “I rarely feel this way. Can you fault me for wanting to enjoy it?”

“Of course not.” She hugs him. “I’m worried that we might be making rash decisions.”

He chuckles, a rumble beneath her. “I make rash decisions all the time while miserable. Why should this be any different? I can hardly do worse than I have.”

 _Famous last words,_ as Sothis would say. _This won’t last, and I don’t know who I’ll be meeting on the other side._

“I need to be prepared.” She’s earned the right to ask.

Quiet. Byleth hears the lauds bells in the distance and his heartbeat thumps against her cheek. The scent of Duscur infiltrates her nose. Byleth sits up, and Dima rolls away from her.

“When I have her head,” Dimitri says in those low, vicious tones she’d thought banished from this space, “when _that woman’s_ head hangs from the gates of Enbarr, when her body is strung in the Imperial Square as written testament to the suffering of her victims, those crushed under her cruel heel… if my corpse still walks this land, it is yours to do with what you wish. Use it, break it, destroy it… I care not.”

 _If,_ he says, _if,_ as if his indomitable will to survive were worthless in the face of his vengeance, and maybe it is. Maybe Dimitri never cared about survival and his fractured mind found a way to _make_ him care, and maybe without Edelgard he falls over like one of Annette’s magic dancing dolls once the spell breaks. Maybe Edelgard dies, and his ghosts find another target and they’re back at square one. She doesn’t know. She doubts Dimitri even knows.

Well, Dimitri might not care, but _Byleth_ cares. Byleth is the one who will pick his broken body up off the ground. Byleth will be the one to wash and dress him before he’s laid back down for good.

Besides, that’s not an answer to Byleth’s question.

Except maybe it is, and if so, that’s somehow even worse.

She reaches out to touch him, but he flinches, an electric jolt shocking them both. His scent goes rancid sugar and honey-sweet. “I will… try to be mindful. I cannot promise anything.”

Her breath heaves and her jaw tenses as she grinds her teeth. It is some time before she is calm enough to speak. “So that’s it?”

 _Sloppy seconds to the dead?_ A cruel thought, but to whom? Dimitri thinks he’s the one in perpetual torment, but who’s getting metaphorically screwed when this is over?

Not for the first time, Byleth thinks back to that oblivious entitlement she observed in Dimitri five years ago. It feels horribly disloyal to think, here and now, that five years gone did not wipe that strange, singular strain of selfishness within him away so much as it warp it into something new and near-unrecognizable. It feels horribly disloyal and horribly _right._

He sighs. “You walked in here knowing what I am, Professor—”

“Byleth,” she corrects, not bothering to hide her annoyance, and he hangs his head in shame at his slip, “and you called me _Alpha_ first. Please do not act as if this happened _to_ you.”

_It didn’t, right? I didn’t take what wasn’t mine to take?_

Dimitri lays curled up on the cracked stone, silent and still, and despite the part of her brain screaming at her to comfort him, soothe his obvious distress, Byleth finds herself rooted in place.

“I do not know what you want from me.” _Liar._ “It is not as if you can claim me for your own, _Byleth,_ so there is little of me left to offer you.”

Byleth’s brain stutters over _claim,_ the hitch of Dimitri’s breath over that word, the sweet-honey returning with a vengeance. She’s worked so hard to keep herself from even thinking that word, to protect herself from what she can never have, but, well, Dimitri has always been good at breaking things, has he not?

All bonds begin with bites, but bite bonds are twisty, complex things, born of belief and intention, anything from ephemeral to intergenerational. Claim bonds are simple, final and total. If crests are power in its purest form, then the claim is steel struck against the flint of crests and their ambient magics, sparking immense power within the claim bond as it entwines an alpha and an omega’s souls.

Claims obligate an alpha by blood covenant to care for and protect their omega above all else. In exchange, omegas’ wills are subsumed by their alphas. It’s said that an omega uses _Alpha_ the way a slave uses _Master_ because the claim makes an omega a slave to their alpha’s will. Or that could be more melodramatic claptrap from novels and operas. What little her dad said about claiming her mother suggests a far more balanced relationship, as did the bonded pairs she occasionally met on her travels as a mercenary.

Still. It would be a dangerous venture with Dimitri. Byleth doesn’t know where to begin listing the reasons a claim between them could go wrong, and that’s _before_ she invokes their respective titles. Best allow that comment to pass unremarked upon.

“Why not?”

Dimitri’s back tenses. “What?”

“Why can’t I claim you?”

This is the part where Dimitri usually would launch into his spiel about belonging to the dead. Dima, however, looks almost ashamed as he responds. “The dead claimed me long before I met you, Professor.”

He’s _death-die-burning-blood_ and _blood-slick-rot-FILTH-STOP_.

Somehow that makes her even angrier. “I don’t see their claim mark on your throat.”

“I—” He shuts his mouth, clenches his legs to his chest as he curls into himself. “It’s not like that. There is no claim upon me, no, but my body is not mine to give, not until _that woman’s_ head is separated from her shoulders.”

So it’s not that she _can’t_ claim him _,_ check. For a moment she was afraid that choice had somehow been stolen from him as well, because though the claim requires a consensual biting of both parties, who knows what consent looks like for Dima, tangled mess of blind rage and meek deference that he is?

Her stomach twists, uneasy. Byleth should leave it there, stop asking questions.

“Do you want me to claim you?”

“It is not for me to decide.” A whine at the end as his voice rises in pitch. Panic in spiraling his scent and his eye to complement it.

“But if it were—”

“It doesn’t matter!” Dima’s fist smacks the ground and Byleth winces when she hears a crack in the stone of the tower floor. Glancing over, she sees the crack is shallow, nothing that could affect the building integrity. It’s still worrying given his crest is not fueling his strength at the moment.

Then she looks at Dima, who is staring at her with the sort of hopeless, defeated yearning she remembers from five years gone, as Marianne shyly uncovered her forearm to reveal Hilda’s bite.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dima repeats, defeated. _It doesn’t matter what I want,_ Byleth finishes silently.

“Okay,” Byleth says aloud, because there’s nothing else to say. Dima insists he belongs to the dead, so Byleth will make the best of the time they have and steel herself for the bitter hereafter. It’s fine. She will manage.

She will not _take what’s hers,_ no matter what her brain and heart scream in her ears.

Something about the way she reorients herself to reality, however, seems to only upset him more. In a flash she’s in his arms, engulfed in his limbs, in blood and honey, and he’s babbling “don’t leave me, _please,_ ” against her throat, and Byleth is saying, “I won’t,” in mechanical tones that wouldn’t reassure anyone, because Dima tore that door in her mind clean off his hinges and Byleth is busy searching for a way to close it again. She repeats it anyway because he’s shattering around her, breaking with every plea for her to stay with him.

“‘S better… this way,” Dima half whispers, half-slurs as he finally calms. He sounds even more skeptical than Byleth feels.

She strokes his hair. “Why is it better, sweet boy?”

His grip on her tightens, as if she were his only shield against the world, and Byleth shakes off the distinct and uncomfortable thought that she might very well be. “You can’t be tainted by me this way.”

The fires in her heart set her blood to boiling again. He whimpers, holding ever even tighter, but says nothing more as he slides back into whatever exhausted fugue of his passes for sleep.

 _Take what’s yours,_ the Ashen Demon whispers.

(But Dima has never been Byleth’s to take.)

* * *

The door in her mind is well and truly gone, Byleth discovers.

He didn’t just open it; he ripped it off its hinges like the pantry door and cracked the plank into countless pieces. There is no longer a door to close in Byleth’s mind. If there were still a door, however, and Byleth did try to close it, then she would catch the longing in Dima’s eyes and it would pop open again.

Byleth stares, fixating upon his scent gland while she’s buried to the hilt within him, his face open as scripture as he sobs with pleasure and with hope, hope she’ll bite down on that gland and make him belong to her, steal from him the choice he’s terrified to make. She hears him howl as he realizes, once again, that he’s been denied, and her heart cracks a little harder with each session. He lingers over her scent gland in turn for longer periods, licking and sucking with manic devotion. Sometimes he drags his teeth over it and Byleth has to pull him away, and the needy, confused sound Dima makes is another crack in the glass Byleth keeps trying to encase herself inside. Sometimes _she’s_ the one lingering too long over his scent gland, her entire being drowning in his mad honey, his blood and smoke and rhododendron-laced sweetness, and somehow, the desperate, wild-eyed _hope_ she sees each time he does is what keeps her from crossing that Airimid in their minds.

Nothing fully comforts him now, now that the door is gone, and each session is more painful than the last. He trips and falls over his mouth as he forces himself to hold back the plea sitting on his tongue, the plea in his eye and in his scent that Byleth so steadfastly ignores.

It’s not as if Byleth has not held back, even with her rut-addled brain demanding she indulge every whim that might cross Dima’s equally heat-stupid mind. He makes no secret of wanting rougher, crueler treatment beneath her hands. Pain beyond marking, harsh words beyond the teasing endearments, commands that would test even his boundless eagerness to obey. He wants to be _used,_ to be a tool, a plaything, an instrument, not for the dead’s vengeance, but for the pleasure of the living. It’s nothing Byleth hasn’t encountered before, the twisting of trauma into erotic fuel, the sublimation of pain into fantasy.

And Byleth has no objections in the abstract—she’s long made peace with sex in her violence, and violence in her sex. Some stubborn, foolish part of her refuses to give up on dreaming of a future she could give him what he craves, the sweet cruelties she longs to deliver unto him, delivered once they could be received with grace and even joy. In the present, however, Dima cannot tell the difference between reality and delusion, and any deliberate hurt, no matter how desired at the time, could further fuel his self-destruction. Byleth will not lend her face and voice to the grim chorus in his mind.

_And yet._

Five years gone and Dima’s still the boy who stared at his classmates’ bond bites, eaten alive by jealousy. Kept from belonging by his myriad secrets, the terrible weight on his soul.

_And yet._

He’s a king-in-waiting, no matter what he tells himself, and Byleth is… alien. Heartless. Inhuman.

_Divine._

Because Byleth is not Sothis as _she_ knows Sothis, but Byleth is Sothis as _Fódlan_ knows Sothis. While what wisps of Sothis’s consciousness are not wound into the fabric of Byleth’s self raise no objections to Byleth claiming Dima (to taking what is, and has always been, _hers_ to take), Sothis has bonds as well, and with them has forged covenants. _God-tier_ covenants.

The covenant that bends time to the beat of Byleth’s dead heart also obligates her to protect all life in Fódlan, and that is scratching the surface of the complex network of covenants Sothis wove with the land to keep her and hers safe. Byleth must fulfill those obligations in her stead, end this war before it consumes them all.

If Byleth must make good on Sothis’s covenants in Sothis’s stead, what has Byleth been provided in return? Power over time, yes, but how much more power over this world might be available to Byleth if she’d only invoke it? What else might she be capable of, if she only allowed herself to call upon those covenants?

She thinks Dima sees it, in those moments when he squints away from her, his fractured mind reflecting some twisted truth buried within her.

How would the man who fashioned himself as a living avatar of the dead’s vengeance contend with the claim of a woman bound by covenant to all life in Fódlan, even the lives of those he despises most?

How can Byleth keep and protect him above all others when he is determined to march them all to their deaths?

_And yet._

“You’re mine,” keeps slipping out of Byleth’s mouth, and “I’m yours,” keeps falling from Dima’s lips in turn, but it’s not true, not in the way it could be, not in the way she wants it to be.

Not in the way _Dima_ wants it to be.

Because of course Dima wants to be claimed. Of course he wants _the bond._ Of course he wants the absolute, unshakeable proof he _belongs_ to someone _,_ magic at his throat to brand him as Byleth’s omega for all the world to witness.

Of course Dima wants to be able to look in a mirror and see he’s loved by her; it might be the only way he’d allow himself to believe it’s true.

_And yet._

He has not asked.

_And yet._

He never will.

Dima will smell of sweet desperation as the longing shreds his insides; the disappointment will sit like boulders as he stares at her with wordless pleas to claim him, keep him, make him hers, but _he’ll never ask._

Dima will never ask.

So Byleth will never have to tell him no.

She will never have to break his heart that way.

_Dima will never ask._

* * *

Until he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: do I have to say it?


	14. fourteen (all the gun fights, and the lime lights, and the holy sick divine nights)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is her mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings.** There is an in-canon mental illness episode referenced in this chapter. An (extremely vague) reference to a past OC's mental health issues and subsequent suicide. There's a lot more of Byleth and Dimitri flipping the bird to ethical teacher/student boundaries. Also, what happens later in this chapter is definitely... not dubious consent per se, but something that is both asked for and given while in an altered mental state and probably under some really unhealthy circumstances in general.
> 
> Chapter title from [Sober II](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8j-PqSFHcc) ~~so it's almost time to panic~~. The AMAZING ART embedded in this chapter was provided by the incredible [ivatimsee](https://twitter.com/ivatimsee). Everyone go check her out and follow her because she's super talented and I am so grateful she contributed this piece. (If anyone else out there feels inspired to draw out scenes from this, PLEASE send them along, I love seeing them so much!)

**RED WOLF MOON 1180**

Byleth could feel her father’s gaze boring into the back of her head.

The moon was rising by the time they’d evacuated the survivors from Remire Village, miles away from the… whatever their former friends and family had become. Acrid smoke still burned in her lungs and nostrils, and the air had a murky quality Byleth didn’t like, but her Lions and most of the villagers looked ready to drop when her dad announced they were far enough away to make camp. They stumbled across a large clearing ringed by pine trees. Byleth didn’t like how open the area was, but with pregnant women, tired elders, and crying children in tow, she knew better than to keep pushing.

Her Lions, to Byleth’s immense pride, stifled their exhaustion to present a calm, unified front for the scared refugees. Dedue and Ashe scraped together what foodstuffs the survivors grabbed with a deer Ashe shot to feed the dozens of hungry people. Mercedes made rounds with the injured villagers in wagons, reporting to Byleth she anticipated another two would pass tonight before starting on the walking wounded. Ingrid brushed down and watered the horses while Sylvain directed camp preparations, his blend of easygoing warmth and natural authority keeping the refugees calm and focused on something other than what they left behind. Annette occupied the children by making their dolls dance for them with her magic, recruiting the older children to watch over the younger ones. Byleth sent Felix off to scout the perimeter to keep him away from Dimitri, but as soon as she could pull him away from cooking, sent Ashe to follow.

She did not assign a task to Dimitri.

Dimitri plopped down on a rock a small distance from the camp, head low and lance pointing to the sky. His face and hair were still matted with blood. Dedue watched him with unreadable eyes while cooking, but the other Lions—and the refugees—avoided him, almost as wary of their savior as they were of the demons that had torn their lives apart. Some of the chatter from the refugees had Byleth wishing they’d left them to be torn limb from limb.

Because save them he had, no matter his cruel methods then and their cruel words now. Dimitri’s crest had burned steady and beacon-bright against the fire and death, slaughtering enemy and victim alike in a tempest of blood and smoke. He’d carved a path quick and vicious to the mage Solon, the one who orchestrated that living nightmare, giving the other Lions the cover necessary to rescue more survivors. At one point he’d pulled a sword from the chest of a man and lopped off the head of another in a single motion, and when he’d looked through her, he’d smiled—smiled—giddy as flames reflected in his dark, empty eyes.

Byleth understood the rush of battle, but never, not even as her coldest, had she experienced _that._

Which did not mean she was unfamiliar with what _that_ was.

She meant to approach him, see if she could coax him to eat and wash up, but Jeralt stepped in front of Byleth, arms crossed and eyes chips of granite. “Follow me.”

With a soft sigh, she picked up the Sword of the Creator and called out to the Lions she and her father were scouting the perimeter. They were too rattled to question why they’d need to scout after she’d already sent Felix out, and Ashe after him.

Deep in the woods, Jeralt’s breaths and steps were heavy, deafening in her ears. He whirled around and planted himself in front of her, abrupt yet immoveable. “We need to talk about your prince.”

“I don’t have any princes,” Byleth replied, confused.

Jeralt didn’t even crack a smile. “I’m not an idiot and this is not the fucking time, kid. How long have you known he’s battle sick?”

 _From the day we met_ drifted through Byleth’s mind, but that wasn’t quite accurate. “He’s never lost control before.”

“That surly kid seemed to think otherwise.”

“Felix,” Byleth corrected, “and I’m not sure what he means.”

“Did you ask?”

“Yes.” Repeatedly, especially after she’d ordered Felix to stop calling Dimitri names in class and _Dimitri,_ of all people, jumped to his defense. Even Ingrid and Sylvain warned her to stay out of it. More ‘Faerghus business,’ she supposed, like the biting.

“I am growing increasingly tired of ‘Faerghus business,’” Sothis remarked in the back of Byleth’s mind.

 _You and me both._ Sothis hummed in approval.

“Fine.” Jeralt let out a puff of air and sagged against a tree. Anger giving way to something else. “But he was completely out of it, kid. We both know what happens when they don’t have a grip on the sickness.”

When most people thought of grave injuries a soldier or mercenary might suffer from battle, they thought of fractured bones or lacerated flesh. Minds, however, could fracture, could bleed and bruise and even break beyond all recognition. Minds needed to rest and recover the way bones did, and sometimes they had to learn to walk properly again.

Sometimes, the broken bone never healed right. Sometimes minds didn’t, either. A weak leg that gave way in battle could spell death for its owner.

A mind that gave way in battle, however…

(Byleth thought, with a roiling stomach, of breaking her leg at eleven during an escort mission gone wrong, bone sticking out of her calf. She’d pushed the splintered end back into her leg and ran on it a week later. It had not bothered her since.)

“He’s going to get someone killed, kid,” Jeralt said, his voice softer now. “Himself, one of the other students… you.” His voice wavered on the last.

Byleth shook her head. Ridiculous. “He’d never hurt me.”

“It doesn’t matter that your prince—”

“—he’s not _my_ prince—”

“—that _your prince_ wouldn’t hurt you. You know that’s not how it works.”

She did know. Some of her father’s best lieutenants woke themselves at night screaming. Those mercenaries, however, watched their minds like hawks. They spoke with one another of their dark memories, smoked herbs or drank special teas to calm their nerves, begged off missions too similar to past haunts. They learned to live with minds that gave way as weak legs did, and more times than not, as years passed, the nightmares would wane, their countenances would lighten, and they’d settle into friendship, into love, into living in ways even Byleth found herself jealous of, perpetually mired in her infinite gray.

The ones who managed the battle sickness did that.

The ones who did not, however… her dad once gave one of those too many chances, and he lost four good men and women before the mercenary’s mind returned to the present and saw what she’d done.

Byleth squeezed her eyes shut. She would not have that for Dimitri. Not that dawning horror. Not what came after.

“Will they listen to me?” Byleth asked. “The Church? Students are required to serve the goddess by acting as the Church’s sword.”

Jeralt sighed. “You have to make them listen, one way or another. Your prince will have a country at his disposal. He can do a lot more damage than one merc.”

“Not my prince,” Byleth snapped. His presumption annoyed her.

This time he snorted. “I remember when I was that dumb, too.” Then, his face sobering, Jeralt clapped her shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, kid,” as if he were consoling her for some great loss, “but he’s dangerous.”

“Like Rhea's dangerous?”

She wasn’t sure where that stiletto-sharp question came from, but she could feel Sothis’s ears prick up in the back of her head.

Jeralt crossed his arms again, standing up. “Maybe. I know she favors you, kid, but that doesn’t mean you should let your guard down around her. Around either of them.”

Rhea had her secrets, her darkness, but there was something that hung between them, fragile as crystal, her alien-kindred scent and the sense of having met a… a what? A foil? A friend? A family member? Someone she’d like to play a game of chess with, Byleth decided. That was good enough for now. “And what about you?”

His eyes popped open. “Me? Kid, you know I’d never—”

“You keep secrets from me,” Byleth pointed out, her gaze and voice pure ice, “and you tell me it is for my own good. Is it? For my own good?”

“I—” Now Jeralt squeezed his eyes shut. “We’re both pretty tired,” he said, which was Jeralt-speak for you’re right but I don’t want to do this right now. He paused, considering her warily. “You’ve changed.”

“Don’t deflect,” Byleth warned him, her voice dropping to new, unknown depths of cold. She crossed her arms and stepped forward.

“I’m not, I’m—” He scrubbed his neck, huffing. “Shit. I stand corrected. You’re just like your mother, kid. Fine, when we get back we’ll find some time to talk.” A beat. “But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be careful with your prince. Or the Archbishop.”

“Not my prince,” Byleth called as Jeralt retreated from her. Jeralt chuckled and Byleth rolled her eyes, grinding her foot into the dirt in frustration.

She had better things to do than sit here and navel-gaze over her dad’s lecture. She should get back to camp to check on her Lions, who, despite their incredible efforts today, were still teenagers trying to wrap their minds around something even Byleth could barely comprehend. She should check on Dimitri, although Dedue likely had him bundled into their tent to keep his black mood from spreading about the camp.

Instead she stood there, grinding her foot into the dirt until Sothis materialized on a low-hanging branch nearby. Her feet dangled from the branches, kicking with the same restless energy Byleth had coursing through her veins. “Perhaps he will finally light a candle to guide you through the mists of the past”.

Byleth shrugged up at her. “Doubt he’ll come clean even when we meet up.” Small wonder he and Rhea once got on well enough to play chess together. “There are more important things to focus on.”

“Your lion cubs, yes.” Sothis sounded doubtful, however. She glanced in the direction of Dimitri’s stump, where Dedue was coaxing him into… something. “One in particular.”

“Don’t start.”

“I find it interesting that your father is more concerned about the prince’s mind than the fact you are…”

Sothis let her words trail off, as uncertain how to finish that sentence as Byleth was hearing it. That she was… what? A teacher to a student? A common mercenary to a crown prince? A… who knew what to an alpha?

_(Was Dimitri an alpha?)_

Byleth shook those thoughts away. What did that question matter, anyway? What did these questions about herself, about her invisible companion, about Dimitri, truly matter? There were refugees and a mage wearing a stolen face to track down. A Flame Emperor to unmask, her strange offer echoing in Byleth’s ears.

“I don’t know, either.” Even if Byleth ever allowed herself to think about it, their stations, in every sense of the word, made them horribly mismatched.

_If you wish to join forces, I will hear your plea._

The arrogance of it, molten and ashen, imperious and narcissistic.

_And yet._

As the months had passed, she’d begun to notice… things, in the air. Scents with a weight in her memory, scents with gravity. Byleth couldn’t parse them yet, but sometimes fragments would filter through, like glyphs from a coded letter where she only had a partial cypher. Her nose attempted to track the familiar and unfamiliar palette of the Flame Emperor. It found bergamot tea times twistier than any chess match, and cherry blossoms buried beneath.

And… rat droppings?

That couldn’t be right, could it?

“The mercenary your father eluded to, the one in your memories…” Byleth looked up at Sothis, startled from her thoughts, but Sothis paused, unable to finish that sentence.

“Look for yourself.” Sothis had made herself home in Byleth’s memories plenty of times before, sometimes to her amusement, sometimes to her disgust.

A pause, then: “I see. I am sorry.”

“Yeah.” There was nothing more to say, was there?

“So this… battle sickness, your father called it? That is what ended… all of them?”

Byleth sighed. “It’s common with mercenaries. Sometimes the past and the present get mixed up and they can’t tell the difference. It can be managed, but if it’s not…”

There was more to it, Byleth had gathered, but her healing knowledge extended to battlefield triage and not much else. Certainly not to healing minds, although she might need to correct that gap in her knowledge soon. It was all so foreign to her, to her mind that sloughed off death and grief as if it were raindrops rolling down her skin, even as she thirsted to feel something about the bodies piled at her feet.

Since she could remember, Byleth had longed for anything but gray. For the first time, it occurred to her that what existed beyond the gray might extract its own terrible price on her soul.

“Mixing the past and present…” Sothis stroked her chin, her gaze distant and troubled. “Yes, I can see what a danger that could create. To always be yoked by what came before, never able to move forward without regret…”

Byleth tilted her head. “Sothis?”

Sothis did not respond at first, too lost in her thoughts to notice Byleth’s concern. Then she jumped from her branch and into Byleth’s face, quick and sylph-like and near-intangible. “Tell me, which do you think best? To keep the past with you and risk being trapped as the woman in your memories was? Or to march forward into the future without the knowledge of what has come before to guide you?”

What an odd question. “Are those… the only options?”

To her credit, Sothis paused to consider that. She was grave as she answered, “I think they might well be.”

Well, that didn’t sound ominous.

Still, Sothis acted as if all existence hinged upon Byleth’s answer. Byleth considered it. She could not think which was better, because all there had been was the gray, and… herself, and this was all she knew. “I guess I’ve always moved forward,” Byleth said, “no matter what came before.”

“I see.” Sothis’s eyes were mournful and her mouth tremulous. “I… I believe in this, I am the same as you. That we must move forward. I hope that we are right. Now, what will you do, with your father’s words? How will you move forward?”

Her leg stopped. Byleth leaned against the tree where her father had been, suddenly very tired. “I’ll start with Seteth.”

* * *

Seteth, to his credit, listened with intent eyes and a thoughtful mien. “I understand why you left this out of the final report, and am pleased you sought my counsel on the matter.”

“But?” He laid it on too thick. The catch hung in the air, tight and heavy.

He rubbed at his temples, his frustration palpable. “If this were almost any other student, I would agree with your recommendation that Prince Dimitri be removed from active duty pending a full examination of his mental facilities,” he began. “However, His Highness is not any other student.”

“What difference does that make?” Byleth asked, her brow furrowing. That couldn’t be right. “If he’s sick, we have to help him.”

Seteth gazed out the window. “My understanding from Rhea and the other Faerghans on staff is there is little tolerance for those whose minds are made unwell by war.”

“Then they should start fewer of them,” Byleth replied.

Seteth let out a startled laugh, then another, pressing his hands to his mouth to keep them from escaping. The effort was more undignified than if he hadn’t tried at all, and sis gaze upon her was almost fond. “Would that Faerghus had you as an advisor, Professor Eisner.”

Then his smile faded. “Faerghus is not unique in this, however. Adrestia and Leicester have no more tolerance for faults of the mind than Faerghus does, perhaps even less so in their ways. The situation in Fhirdiad is highly unstable, and to withdraw His Highness from his assignments would send a signal to the Faerghan nobility the Church does not trust him to lead in battle. If we do not trust him to face bandits, then how can they trust him to lead them as their king?”

Bandits. Remire alone was a nightmare made real. This whole year had been a series of atrocities dropped at her Lions’ feet, but Byleth supposed nobody in Faerghus would care how hellish any of it had been. She took a deep breath to steady herself. The words, leaden in her throat, came easier than she expected. “Maybe they shouldn’t.”

His eyes widened in shock. Leaning back, he studied her with a curious look, one reminiscent of when she’d first carried an unconscious Flayn out of the catacombs and plopped her into Seteth’s arms. As if seeing Byleth for the first time, and approving of what he saw.

“No, perhaps they should not,” Seteth conceded. “But everything the Church does is watched and analyzed by the nobility. Adrestia may have forgotten it was the goddess, through Seiros, that first sat Wilhelm von Hresvelg on the throne, but Faerghus remembers that Loog Blaiddyd and his descendants rule only with her blessing, as conveyed through the Archbishop’s recognition of Faerghan sovereignty. To remove His Highness from field assignments would be seen as tantamount to the goddess withdrawing her blessing from the Blaiddyds. There would be a succession crisis at best, more likely civil war.”

She swallowed the bile in her throat. So getting Dimitri help meant throwing Faerghus into even more chaos, potentially cost him the throne he’d been groomed for since his birth. He’d never have the power to help his people, or fulfill his promise to Dedue to restore Duscur’s sovereignty.

_He’d be free for her to take._

Byleth blinked. Where had that come from? What nonsense. Dimitri would be crowned at the beginning of next year, leave her and Garreg Mach behind for a world beyond her imagination, and Byleth would… well, Byleth always moved forward. She would not be trapped by regret.

There was nothing to regret in the first place.

Heat burbled beneath her skin. The sword hanging over Dimitri’s head could not be ignored for the sake of politics. “I understand your concerns,” Byleth said finally, willing herself calm, “but we can’t do nothing, either.”

“I did not say that.” Seteth’s face was hard. “We cannot move as quickly as we wish, no, but there is also danger in allowing him to take the throne without addressing potential sickness of the mind. I will speak with Rhea and determine what our options are. She is a politician worthy of this challenge. And we will cancel all class assignments this month to give His Highness an opportunity to rest. Make sure he takes advantage.”

“I will.” Byleth nodded at Seteth, sharp and quick. She rose to leave, but hesitated when Seteth cleared his throat.

“It cannot have been easy to make this recommendation, Professor Eisner.” Seteth’s eyes were warm, even with the grim set of his mouth. “I doubt he would have taken your removing him from field assignments well.”

Something hot and sharp stabbed her stomach and tore through her gut, something that clawed and screamed to be let out. How dare he. How dare he suggest she wouldn’t protect her—her student, even if it meant risking losing his regard forever? “Did you think I wouldn’t do right by Dima?”

Seteth was quiet for a long, long time, studying her while the thing in Byleth’s chest roared with rage. She willed it down, aware of the colossal error she had just made. Seteth, however, released a long breath, and the relief from it was palpable. “Forgive me,” he said finally. “I will not make that mistake again.”

The thing inside her quieted, satisfied for the moment. “Thank you.”

She managed to compose herself as she walked back to her office, only to find an ashen-faced Dimitri waiting for her at the door. Collecting the fragments of guilt and concern and shoving them into the darkest corner of her mind, she nodded in greeting.

“C-could we speak, Professor? Please?” Dimitri asked in a thin, quavery voice, and Byleth didn’t wince when she heard the metal creaking as he mangled another pair of gauntlets. “It—it’s about what happened. At Remire Village.”

From across the hall, she saw Seteth watching the two of them, his eyes blank as she motioned for Dimitri to follow her into her office. She glared straight into his narrowed eyes as the door shut between them.

Byleth’s office used to be four walls, a desk, a chair, a window, a broom closet, and some empty shelves. Now the closet was full of cubbies where students often poked around looking for items they’d lost, knowing Byleth would pick them up and keep them safe. An elegant tea service Dimitri gifted Byleth on her birthday (one he refused to touch) sat on a small table Leonie caught another monk tossing out and brought to Byleth’s office, freshly repaired and painted a cheery lemon yellow. A brightly-colored knitted tea cozy from Bernadetta covered the pot. Several game boards, courtesy of Sylvain and Claude, were stacked beneath it. Next to the table was a box of mismatched teacups Ashe found from a junk peddler, which Byleth used to serve Dimitri and other clumsy students.

Dedue kept a chipped vase filled with fresh flowers, and one time Petra stuck several brightly-colored feathers inside it. Lysithea crafted a large rune that could glow for a few hours past sunset for Byleth’s desk, while an ornate tin contained whatever treats Mercedes had just baked. The treats vanished faster than Mercedes could refill it, but Sylvain often dropped off the extra sweets that omegas gave him to supplement her supplies. Ingrid liked to stash novels on Byleth’s bottom shelf that Seteth disapproved of so he would not confiscate them. A sort of underground book club had populated there, with Ashe, Claude, Sylvain, and Bernadetta its most frequent browsers. Dried Garland Moon wreaths hung off a hook meant for her coat, but Cyril installed a second hook, then a third when that became where Dorothea hung her cap during tea times. Above her window, Byleth hung the antlers Claude had given her to “rep the deer,” with more wreaths hanging from the rack. More precious to her were the bottles of spices he’d donated, which Byleth was grateful for on days when the dining hall served Faerghan “delicacies.”

Annette came by weekly to dust the shelves, concentrating hard to keep from knocking over the tea tins Lorenz and Ferdinand kept stocked better than any merchant or apothecary. Sometimes Mercedes followed after her to make sure she didn’t break anything. Sitting beside the tea tins was a coffee grinder Hubert used when he brought Byleth roasted beans from Brigid or Dagda. Even Felix sheepishly plopped down a silver letter opener shaped like a sword one day, his cheeks glowing, while Marianne left for her a delicate jewelry box painted with grazing wild horses to hold the accessories Hilda made for Byleth. Raphael kept yet another container full of jerky and dried fruits, wanting something more filling than pastries for tea times, and Lorenz presented her with a set of monogrammed linen kerchiefs that Byleth handed out whenever one of her students broke down from school or family stress.

An exquisite eagle carved from onyx, with a solid-gold beak and wings set with semi-precious stones, was a gift from Edelgard and acted as Byleth’s paperweight. An ivory lion with a golden mane and sapphire eyes Dimitri claimed he found in a shop a few days after the gift of the eagle sat on the windowsill, too charming and precious for such a mundane task as paperweight. In her quill holder (itself a blown-glass container with swirling colors courtesy of Ignatz) was a wooden toy soldier missing an eye, a gift from Alois’s daughter from the last time his family visited the monastery. According to Alois, she’d been insistent on leaving something behind for Byleth's office too.

The walls were a mishmash of the Blue Lions banner, a rotating collection of Ignatz’s favorite sketches, a mounted Teutates Herring that Flayn presented her with after the fishing contest, botanical prints from Dedue and Ashe, and woodblock prints of famous operas Dorothea liked to intersperse. Dorothea had taken up an unofficial role as office curator, rotating wall hangings and knickknacks to suit whatever decorating whims seized her this month, and Byleth was grateful for her to managing the potential chaos. The top of the highest shelf contained a wine bottle and goblets Manuela kept here for “manmergencies,” which occurred about every other week. Even Hanneman, confused and unsettled by the mess, kept dropping off old scientific journals with dog-eared articles for Byleth to review.

Most impressive had been the day Linhardt and Caspar dragged a full-sized sofa into the office one day from who-knew-where. She’d wondered where Linhardt found the energy until Byleth realized his second-favorite napping pillow had taken permanent residence in her office. Byleth decided as long as the couch had no bugs, it was better not to ask too many questions. In time, a mink blanket from the Kingdom’s crown furrier joined it, after Dimitri observed how drafty her office was, and a needlepoint pillow with fish from Bernadetta sat jauntily in the corner.

It was sometimes nearly impossible to find much or maneuver with all the items in the room, which sometimes sent Byleth back to her quarters to work. Her dad refused to step foot in her office, and most of the other staff found it uncomfortable for reasons she couldn’t fathom.

Byleth wouldn’t have it any other way.

As soon as he had privacy, Dimitri slumped over, as if the weight of everything on his shoulders finally became too much on him. Perhaps it had. “Professor... I.. ” His voice was rough, his eyes red-rimmed and face puffy. “I'm sorry you saw that side of me in the village. It must have been quite a shock to you and the others. I'm mortified by my behavior.”

Of course he would apologize. In a sense, they were all owed one. Yet this was not the apology Byleth wanted. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this side of me existed so you could account for it’ would have been her choice. Watching the way he near-trembled with misery, however, and hearing the creak of his breaking gauntlets… well, Byleth couldn’t quibble on details. “When I saw the chaos and violence there… my mind just went completely dark.”

She searched her brain for something productive to say, something that might let her take this conversation in a productive direction. Empathy, she decided. “I felt the same.”

He looked up at her for the first time, wild, eyes still glossy with tears not yet finished flowing. “I see... So that happens to you as well, then?”

The question mark at the end of the sentence was barely perceptible, but the hope, the dream of someone who understood was bright in those eyes, and Byleth hated to crush it. “No,” she admitted, “but I’m familiar with it. Anger that takes you out of yourself.”

If anything, Byleth had never felt more aware in battle than when the rage first consumed her. It made her focused, cold… present in a way she had never been before. This, she supposed, was what it was like to fight when you cared.

Small wonder so many men and women were carried away on that current, on that rush.

Byleth would not be one of them.

Dimitri dropped again, deflating as she’d predicted. “I see why you would say that. I always strive to keep my emotions at bay, but… sometimes the darkness takes hold and… it's impossible to suppress. It just shows you how lacking I am… ”

Byleth suppressed a sigh. She hadn’t wanted to lie to him, but Dimitri’s assumption that if she did not experience his symptoms, she could not possibly understand him frustrated her. Perhaps she never could fully grasp them; she’d overheard him speaking with Marianne once about the dark things prowling in both their chests. Still, she would not let that stop her from trying.

“I've told you before,” Dimitri continued, the metal gauntlets cracking now, “that someday we may find ourselves facing something we simply cannot accept.”

Sothis sat at Byleth’s desk with grim eyes, shaking her head. _We always move forward,_ she mouthed, and Byleth’s mouth quirked.

“I don’t agree,” Byleth told Dimitri, still looking at Sothis. “I think we must accept the things we believe cannot accept if we are to change them.”

Behind her, Sothis nodded in approval.

Dimitri stared down, blank-eyed, at his now-ruined gauntlets.

“Forgive me, but I cannot accept the carnage at Remire Village,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “Solon and the Flame Emperor are both beasts who must be eliminated. Demons who kill the innocent. They aren't even human at this point.”

Something about the way he said that chilled Byleth far more than the manic smile from his blood fugue back in the village. There, he’d been absent from himself. Here… Dimitri had no such excuse.

The metal creaked again. Enough was enough. “Dimitri,” Byleth said in her sharpest professor voice, “please put your hands on my desk.”

“I—” He glanced down and saw the blood seeping from where the broken metal had punctured the back of his hand. “F-forgive me. I could do worse to your desk if I—”

“Do it,” Byleth snapped, and swallowing, Dimitri complied. His eyes slid shut, and a wave of calm seemed to wash over him as he fell in line.

Concerned, Byleth picked up the hand where he’d punctured the metal gauntlet deeply enough to cut himself. He tensed as she unhooked the armor and laid it upon the desk, but relaxed even more as she worked a simple heal spell over his hand, though there was a hitch to his breath when her fingers slid over his palm. There were a half-dozen ragged scratches on his hands, likely from rough fingernails rather than serrated metal, and dozens more faint scars below.

“I know they are unpleasant to look upon,” Dimitri murmured, trying to snatch his hand away, but Byleth held firm, her eyes never wavering as she worked first on this hand, then the other.

The heal spell slid like water over a dry riverbed, smoothing away the cracked and torn flesh. “There. Don’t touch them again.”

With a gulp, he nodded, his face a strange shade of pink. “Th-thank you.”

“Of course. Now, where is this anger coming from?”

He stared at her, hollow-eyed, and tugged at his hair instead of picking at his hands. Byleth’s lips pressed together as she watched him. “I said hands on the desk.”

Dimitri blinked, startled, and his hands were back in an instant. _Good boy_ sat on her tongue, but Byleth couldn’t afford that mistake again. Still, he peeked at her, waiting, and the disappointed furrow in his brow sent a raft of guilt through her.

“I know it must be hard to fathom,” he murmured, looking away again. “It's true that I don't have any strong connection to those villagers. And yet… ”

The moment hung for a tiny eternity between them. “Duscur,” Byleth finished for him, and another yank to his hair had Byleth grabbing for his hands and slapping them onto the desk yet again. Watching him tear himself apart was not something she could stomach right now.

He nodded at her, eyes cloudy and lips quivering. A single tear rolled down his cheek. “I saw the same flames of torment there.”

The dam burst. Through his sobs he choked out the story of Duscur: the looming tension as their procession was halted by an unexpected blockade. His father, entreating him to be brave as he left the carriage to see what was holding up their progression. The screams as the trees lining the roads burst into flames, fire consuming flesh and metal indiscriminately. His father’s head, rolling off his shoulders. Glenn’s sword buying Dimitri enough time to run as an axe cleaved his Shield in two.

The fire and death and smoke and blood and ash.

Unlike with Ashe, Byleth did not hesitate this time to pull Dimitri into her arms as grief overwhelmed him. She meant to move him to sit on the couch, but to her confusion, he sank to the ground, as if the weight of his grief had brought him to his knees. Byleth almost fell with him, Dimitri’s head briefly resting in the crook of her neck as he took a long, deep breath. Then he sobbed, and Byleth maneuvered herself to the sofa instead, his head coming to rest in her lap. She stroked his hair, humming the same sort of nonsense words and tavern ditties as she had for Ashe as the story tumbled out of his mouth.

There was nothing to say, so Byleth didn’t bother. This was far beyond her ability to soothe, no matter how much Dimitri seemed to calm with his head pillowed in her lap, arms vise-tight around her legs. After the horrible revelations stopped pouring out of him, he was quiet for some time, sniffling once in a while, and Byleth tried to keep her head from spinning at the enormity of his grief. He made soft noises each time her fingers ran through his hair, serene compared to the wretched things he’d put into words. Byleth could not bring herself to stop.

“I still remember their faces,” he admitted in a small, lost voice, as if this were some great sin he were confessing. “Their screams. The tortured last moments of every person who died that day… ”

Byleth scraped around for something to say to match the moment. “No one is asking you to forget them.”

Dimitri laughed, a harsh stutter against her lap. “The whole world demands that of me.”

“In truth, a little forgetting might do him a lot of good,” Sothis remarked from Byleth’s chair. Byleth shot her a sharp ‘not-the-time’ look, and Sothis sighed, looking almost as overwhelmed as Byleth felt.

He was quiet for another moment, his body sinking against her as his eyes fluttered shut. His grip on her relaxed as his breathing grew slow and even. Byleth thought he might have fallen asleep there. As her hand stilled, however, Dimitri recalled himself, suddenly realizing where he was; it reminded Byleth that Seteth would toss her out of Garreg Mach if he walked in here at the moment.

Before Byleth could say anything, however, Dimitri was back on his feet, straightening his uniform and wiping his face with a kerchief from his breast pocket. “I apologize for imposing on your time, Professor Eisner.” Deeper tones. The natural command of an alpha.

Did she leave the honey open again?

“You didn’t impose on me, Dimitri,” Byleth said, her brow furrowing. “Do you need a moment?”

“I am fine now. You are right that we must move forward. Right now, all that matters is that we do whatever we can to help the surviving villagers get back to their normal lives.”

“That’s… noble.” Why was her stomach sinking? “I think you left a pair of gloves here, if you’re not comfortable… ” She gestured towards his hands.

Dimitri looked down at his hands, which, despite her healing, still showed more than she suspected he was comfortable sharing with the world. “I… thank you. As usual, you think of everything.”

After he retrieved the gloves, he paused as he picked up his mangled gauntlets. “Thank you,” he repeated. “For everything.”

Byleth wasn’t sure she had done anything, but she summoned up the ghost of a smile. “I’m here if you need anything.”

The hinges did not creak as Dimitri opened the door, and Byleth let herself believe she had done something to help, lightened his burden, perhaps, or offered him a few moments’ peace. Then he doubled back on her, and the grief had vanished into the aether, leaving something else behind: something ugly, something cold and dead and terrifying even to Ashen Demons such as she. “There's a reason that I came to the Officers Academy,” the thing wearing Dimitri’s face murmured in low, cruel tones. “Just one reason.”

Then, the scents: burning flesh. Fresh-spilled blood in the grass. The stench of a rotting battlefield. She kept herself from flinching at the sudden intrusion. “What was it?”

“I came here for revenge. And one day, I will have it.”

The scent faded, but her nose wrinkled as he strode away.

Sothis’s eyes were saucer-wide as she brought her hand to her mouth. “That was not losing himself in the moment.”

Byleth turned back to where the thing lurking within Dimitri had stood. “No,” she agreed. “No, it was not.”

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

It begins like this: Dima turns to her, hazy and wrecked with need, and she grips his hair like a lifeline and forces open his mouth with her tongue. He moans sweetly against her, the chamomile and mad honey soup-thick in her lungs as she ravishes his mouth. She nips his lip with her canines, drawing blood and relishing the taste of his hurt. When he whimpers, Byleth smiles.

She kisses his good eyelid tenderly, then his ruined one. He trembles beneath her with a weak protest, but Byleth shushes him with another thrust of her tongue into his too-willing mouth.

Byleth pecks along his jaw. She sucks a dark spot into the soft juncture of his neck. Dima shivers as Byleth drags her teeth along the mark, his throat bared to her in total submission. When she catches his eye, the devotion there makes her chest hurt.

She nibbles on his collarbone as she digs her nails into Dima’s chest, leaving every mark she can now, before the scents and chemicals and magics of the heat stop keeping his ghosts at bay. Byleth wants to leave something behind when Dimitri goes back to spitting and snarling. Something to keep _her_ sane when his sanity is a distant memory.

So she makes every touch, every kiss count, from the marks left by sucking at his skin, to the bruises she presses into his hips, to the scratches she claws into his chest. Dima, too, seems swept up in her dark mood, his fingers adding new constellations of bruises to the ones already twinkling on her hips and chest and shoulders.

She takes him on his back yet again because she wants to keep looking into his eye. Foolish of her. Sentimental. The way his mouth moves as she toys with his needy hole makes it so worth it.

This is her mistake: she’s inside him, and he’s wild-eyed and radiant, his arms holding her down as the pleasure spirals her up up up through her spine and makes her dead heart hot hot hot and until she explodes and Byleth says, “I love you,” as her knot fills him.

Dima’s eye widens and he’s fear and shock and ecstasy and wonder and awe and love love love lovelove _love_ rapid-cycling until everything swirls into a single anguished look; he gasps, choking and wet as he squeezes his eye shut, shuddering mouth trying to form words instead of noises.

Byleth hears those frantic, half-formed sounds, feels the steel grip of his fingertips in her hips, and dread spikes through her. Not because she didn’t mean the words; she does, and whatever other mistakes she’s made in this life, Dima will never be one of them. If anything, she says them again, strong and sure: “I love you, Dima. I do.”

Now she watches him wrest control over his mouth and the words come, they come: “Alpha, bite me, please, claim me, pleasepleaseplease bite me _please_.”

Then: Dima’s eye widening again, this time in horror, and him clamping his hand over his mouth. Sighing, Byleth tugs at his hand, trying to pry it away, but he remains firm, shaking his head as his tears fall. She mouths his shoulder, pressing her tongue at his scent gland, but that only upsets him more. Wet sounds escape through the gaps in his fingers as his entire body shakes with his sobbing.

It doesn’t matter how long Dima keeps his hand there. The words escaped; they hang in the air heavy as honey, and now Byleth has to decide what to do with them.

She knows what she must do.

(That is not what she does.)

“Dima,” Byleth says instead, gripping his shoulders as her only purchase, “talk to me. Please.”

Slowly his hands slide from his mouth, though his tears stream unabated. “I’m sorry,” he cries. “Sorrysorrysorry—”

“Stop apologizing.” She can’t think straight when he’s apologizing for having the audacity to want something for himself, something she’s spent the last five years wishing she had given him. He stops the words, but the whimpering continues, and it hurts to listen. “Did you mean it?”

“I—I—” He’s trying so hard to deny it. She can smell his blood, the mangled bittersweetness of his honey offering her a glimpse through the glass walls in her mind, promising color, noise, _emotion._

“I could steal your crown,” Byleth reminds him, harsh, and still that doesn’t unstick the lie from his throat. She thrusts into him and he heaves, shaking beneath her. “I could keep you from your vengeance.”

Dima’s eye widens dinner-plate round at that, but still the lie won’t come.

“Did you mean it?” Byleth asks again, demanding now. “Answer me!”

After a forever moment’s hesitation, Dimitri nods, steady and sure even as fresh tears fall from his eye. “Claim me,” he begs, “please. _Alpha_. I know I don’t deserve—”

“Shut up.” Now she covers his mouth to stop his terrible, terrible words. “You do _not_ decide what you deserve.”

This is her mistake: Byleth gives Dima what he wants.

She pumps into him furiously, watching as his despair is wiped from his face by mindless pleasure, eye rolled so far into his head that nothing but white shows. She is furious, relentless, determined to press every bit of her lust and longing and love into the beautiful wreck of him, rage and pleasure entwining to bring her to brutal new heights. As he shakes beneath her, limp as a ragdoll in the cruel pace of her fucking, Byleth pulls him upward, into her arms as best possible while keeping up her brutal pace. He is chamomile, chamomile in her nose and in her mouth and lungs.

With a final snarl, Byleth sinks her teeth into Dima, and _takes what's hers._

* * *

At first, it reminds her of Sothis, and the void, the darkness.

A rush in her ears, Dima’s blood in her mouth, and then… _everything._ Reds turn crimson, greens turn verdant, blues turn azure, and there’s music in the way her hand strokes his back, there’s a hand stroking her cheek tenderly as she breathes in his scent. She is blooming and melting and burning and rising from the ash with him, and he is the most delicious poison she’s ever tasted; she is _fucked up_ on his sweetness and smoke.

Everything is _more_. He is _more_ , she is _more_ , they are _more_ , they are _everything…_

… but not quite.

When Byleth recovers herself, Dima’s eye is shut and he mumbles incoherently in her arms. His head falls into the crook of her neck where her scent gland resides, mouth slotting against her as if by design.

Despite his barely-conscious state, Dima needs no prompting. He clamps down with sharp teeth, piercing her skin and the gland, the agony quickly twisting into its own strange ecstasy, thunderbolts through her bones and wildfires in her blood. Byleth is unmade, shattering, and remade, rearranged into the mosaic of _them._ Red strings and fingerprints and every mark they’ve ever left upon one another become tattoos on their souls.

“Fuck,” Byleth breathes, shaking with him. The word slips out despite herself. Dima doesn’t seem aware she’s spoken, but he licks the bite mark with a dreamy expression.

In the end, when the haze clears and the earthquakes give way, Byleth thinks it feels most like coming home.

Strange, for someone who spent most of her life without one.

It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever known.

* * *

This time when Byleth wakes everything is _hers._

Dima’s body drapes over Byleth like a cloak, his cracked lips ghosting over the mark he’s left upon her throat. Admiring it, she supposes, while it’s still there to admire. His mark on her skin will heal; it will fade into near-nothingness. Her mark on his skin will deepen, brand his throat with her magic and her dominion over him, shine bright for all the world to see.

He is glowing, incandescent in the warm light of a falling sun, spun in the azure of high-summer seas and skies and the golden rye fields of the Tailtean Plains. His breath is heavy on her skin, and everything she is drowns in the scent and the taste of him.

Byleth reaches up to stroke his hair, and he pushes into her with a soft whine. Chamomile, and a pulse of something in the back of her skull. Love. Trust.

_Fear._

“Forgive me for waking you,” Dima murmurs into her neck. “I just… ” He swallows, and Byleth laces her fingers with his, squeezes his hand in reassurance. “I wanted to be closer.”

Byleth tilts her head to the side. They are, in a sense, as close as two people can be now. Sure, their connection is new and fragile still, but already Byleth can feel the threads of them winding together and weaving their souls into a new fabric.

She surveys the new horizons within her, the places in which he has already opened like moonflowers as the sun sets in the sky. There is _more_ now. Dima is noisy, blaring like trumpets; he is bright, vivid as staring into an eclipse, he is harsh, sandstorm and snowstorm and lightning flashing and crashing. Fires licking at the core. Shapes, shadows move at the edges of him as Byleth feels into this new space, all held at bay… for now.

Byleth withdraws. Echoes follow, but they’re lost in the vast space of her, meadows and valleys, lakes and mountains, absorbing the cacophony with ease. She looks up at Dima, and his face is frozen, the fear a stitch in the fabric of them.

Another whine, and his weight settles heavier upon her. An open-mouthed kiss to her throat, and the rough brush of his lips makes her shiver. “I need—”

He stops himself. Still insatiable. Still afraid to admit it.

 _Greedy. Knot slut._ She claims him and still he wants _more._ She _claims_ him and still he’s terrified.

He’ll always want _more._ Byleth knows that. Finds it oddly endearing.

Here, now, however, Byleth wants to _take._ Wants to savor. Wants to melt and bloom.

When her mouth fuses to his, wrings the air from his lungs, he nearly collapses atop her. It’s no more than a flick of her wrist to flip him over; he responds to her unspoken command with ease. Her fingers entwine with his as she grinds herself against his cock, still trapped between them. Teases herself at the opening. She’s almost as wet as he is.

Dima pulls away with a half-shake of his head. Looks away from her, squinting.

A frisson of foreign emotion—not quite fear, not quite desire—spasms through Byleth. Buried deeper than his scent. Very well. Something to examine at a later date, when they are not freshly forging Byleth’s dominion over him.

Again Byleth’s lust for violence has abandoned her. It will return, in time, but here, now, she remains laced fingers and flowering mouth, touching and kissing every scar across his skin. Not an apology, but a reclamation. Dima did well, keeping himself alive long enough for Byleth to put herself back together. She is proud of his survival, however tattered, and will honor the struggle on his skin.

(It’s Byleth who failed him. Not in not reconstructing her broken body fast enough, but in failing to act when she saw the thunderclouds roll onto the horizon.)

She wants to drink the sweetness of his skin, his mouth, his body, and she does. Dima is easy, pliant in her arms as she works her way under his skin, inside his mind. Tendrils of their fragile connection wrap around him, but despite Byleth gently inviting him to reciprocate, he seems far more content to allow her to consume him than to wind his own path into her veins, eager in his yielding to her.

Sighing into his mouth as she knots him, Byleth lets something inside herself open, rhododendron blooming between them, and Dima’s eyes widen, breath hitching as he senses what Byleth is showing him. He squeezes his eyes shut, as if to block it out, but Byleth lets it unfurl further, refuses to let him hide from the truth.

That he is _brilliant,_ brave and thoughtful and kind; that he is _beautiful,_ tender and gentle and devoted; that he is _strong,_ clever and loyal and determined.

That she loves him.

When Byleth pulls away, he’s smiling for the first time since before the claim. A real smile, breathless, awestruck. “Is this… how you feel about me, my professor? My alpha?” Dima murmurs. “My… my beloved?”

Byleth’s smile is her answer, and Dima’s breath is sharp, shocked. For the first time he extends himself over the bond, and Byleth feels the history of them from his view: the way his doubts melted like snowflakes the night he saw her with Ashe after Lonato died, the peace he found in their tea times in her office, the struggle not to become too accustomed to the bliss he found in her scent. The marrow-deep grief of her loss. The lonely heats where her shade was his only companion, a bulwark summoned against the screams of the dead. The horror of seeing her at the tower, terrified her ghost had finally abandoned him to call instead for Edelgard’s head. The divinity he sensed within her, and his utter unworthiness to look upon it, bloodied beast that he was.

 _No,_ Byleth thinks, sharp as daggers, _you’re the one I_ want _to see me. Your mad honey let me hear colors and see music._

 _Your honey makes me_ feel _._

Dima stares at first as if hypnotized, but understanding slowly dawns, a tear trailing down his cheek. “Of course,” he murmurs in dizzy wonder. “Of course I belong to you… but you… my beloved… you belong to me as well, don’t you?”

Byleth kisses away the tear. “You’re mine,” she says as the shock of the connection quakes through both of them. She lays atop him and rests her eyes. Dima wraps his arms around her, crushing any remaining gap between their bodies. “And I’m yours.”

“Yours,” he breathes as they drift off into slumber.

* * *

In the waning hours of Dorothea’s heat, particularly after Byleth confronted Dorothea about what she wanted from Byleth, Byleth and Dorothea both felt a connection forged. A bond, a tether, fine but unbreakable between them. Though they had never bitten one another, and though the Lions are Byleth’s to shepherd, her cherished cubs, Dorothea is (was) the one student Byleth unequivocally calls _pack._

Even as their connection grew, however, Byleth dreamed of _escape._ Heat is hard and hot. Scents curdle as days pass. Byleth ached for clean air and fresh food, fantasized about the bathhouse. She craved space, solitude.

Not so with Dima. With Dima, she longs to stay forever in this soft, distant place. Some of that is the bond, new and fragile and easily disrupted by a world remaking itself in blood and fire, in steel and bleached bone. The worst of worlds in which to craft a mate for one’s soul.

More of it is the fear. Byleth dreads sunrise the way she dreaded sitting upon the throne in the holy tomb, Rhea’s sharp eyes clouded and scent frightening in its inhumanity. Byleth had been right to be afraid, but not for the reasons she believed.

Dima shares her fear; his growing terror feeds hers. Their lovemaking in the final hours is frantic, desperate. It’s the underlying tension of two people who sense the end is near and are hungry to absorb as much as they can of one another before the inevitable comes.

When the moon is high, they sit together on the balcony, the early-spring winds not enough to douse the fires burning between them. Below the valley is lush and green, winter snows having given way to tangles of meadow wildflowers and blossoming trees. Byleth has never seen anything quite like it, even in a pleasure garden.

Dima’s head is pillowed on her lap, and she strokes his hair, tender. He leans into her every touch as if it’s the first, and he toys with her other hand, tracing the fingers.

“I wish I were the omega you deserved.”

“I don’t want another omega,” Byleth tells him. “I want you.”

His half-smile is tired and sad, and he kisses her palm. Her hands fascinate him. She’s not sure why.

Byleth scratches his scalp. She wishes she could pray, but the only miracles left in this world are the ones she rips from the fabric of time.

She does not pray, but still, she thinks, she hopes, she wishes in the moonlight of the Goddess Tower: _please,_ _let this be enough._

(Perhaps she would have more luck wishing for Edelgard to lay down her axe.)

* * *

Byleth wakes again ahead of the lauds bells. Dima does not stir beside her, but Byleth knows it’s over.

She watches him as he sleeps, studying how much younger, how peaceful he appears. Tries not to wonder if this will be the last time. He’s slow to rouse, an unusual reversal of their sleep dynamic. Dima tugs on her ankle when she stands, and when Byleth leans down and tugs on his hair, he groans and bats at the air.

“Let me stay,” he mumbles before settling into his nest again, grabbing her by the waist to pull her beside him. Byleth permits it, and for a moment, closes her eyes as well, breathes in the pure mad honey of him, the sweetened chamomile, the verdant crimson azure of the song in his scent.

It can’t last. _It’s already gone._

Byleth’s eyes pop open.

Very well. He may stay, but she cannot. _(Already gone.)_

Byleth wants a bath. Despite her best efforts, she’s sticky with his fluids and hers, and her hair is lank and greasy.

Extricating herself again, she stands up and steps out of his reach. Dima pops his eye open. “I’ve never been so… ”

“So…?” Byleth prompts him.

“Hmmm?” Dima blinks sleepily at her, his train of thought already lost. A soft, honest smile breaks over his mouth.

Never mind that. “What are you feeling right now?”

“Tired,” comes to his lips immediately. “Hungry” follows.

 _Scared_ hangs in the air, spoken across the fragile new link between them. Small wonder he wants to stay here, sleeping forever, seeped in euphoria.

It’s not healthy, however, to stay. The magics of the heat sustained him through his reduced food intake these past days, but within hours that will catch up with him. Their heat and rut scents will grow stale.

Also, Byleth would like to sleep again, this time in a real bed. Fussy of her, she knows.

Her goal now is to get out of the tower, so Byleth has little energy to pick up after both of them. She pulls on her shirt and shorts and prompts Dima to put on the fresh shirt and loose hose stocked in his supplies. As he obeys her, Byleth sees a green sparkle on his neck. Turning his head is a perfect replica of her bite mark, gleaming in pale jade.

The claim took.

He’s _hers._

With a satisfied smirk, Byleth runs her finger along the mark. Dima shivers lightly, sensitive at the spot. “What are you…?”

“Your claim mark’s appeared,” Byleth says. Tangible proof he belongs to her.

“Really?” He sounds surprised, then relieved, then utterly delighted as a slow, satisfied smile spreads over his face, a smile so bright it almost blinds her in its radiance.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/37055320@N04/49835159136/in/dateposted-public/)

Byleth nods. “When we go to the bathhouse, I’ll show you.”

Dima touches the spot and sobs, pulling her into his arms, the crest-enhanced aspect of his strength already returning. “Beloved,” he murmurs, pulling her to his chest, beaming still. “ _Alpha._ ” The happy wonder in his eye and voice shake Byleth to the core. “I… I wanted…”

Byleth tilts her head, waiting. Dima blushes but says no more. He droops over her, exhausted despite having recently woken. Heat is exhausting, even with the sleep cycle conserving their energy, and they’re both hungry and sticky.

She grins at him, pecking his cheek, and Dimitri follows her in a quiet daze. Byleth picks up her pack. As they reach the stairwell, Dimitri says, “My armor,” brow furrowing despite his half-asleep state.

“We will bring it to you,” Byleth promises, and Dimitri is spacey enough to accept that answer.

Strange, Byleth thinks, how heavy her dead heart was, how unsteady each step felt, as she first walked up these steps five days ago. Now Byleth feels the same weight, same unsteadiness, as she walks down them. Dimitri, sensing her nerves, grips her arm tightly, but seems to know intuitively just how hard he can squeeze without hurting her.

Byleth opens the tower door.

* * *

Felix is waiting. Byleth expects that. She expects Ashe or Mercedes, perhaps both, beside him. The omegas wait.

It's not Mercedes or Ashe with Felix, however; but Ingrid, a grim-eyed sentinel with crossed arms and a marble jaw, frozen tundras soaked with blood; but Sylvain, deceptively casual as he leans on the well, forest fires burning and leaving mountains and valleys as nothing but ash. Their breaths are heavy, their pupils constricted almost to pinpoints as they flash warning teeth and grip lances tight enough to snap the way Dimitri snaps necks. Felix is the spear-tip of their vanguard, ozone-sharp in her nose as he vibrates with rage, hot enough to melt the Zoltan steel at his hip. Sweat rolls down Felix's forehead and he sways on his feet, but that only makes him more terrifying, as if he’d steady himself by plunging his sword through Byleth’s chest.

Behind them…

Byleth blinks.

Behind them the sky is high-summer blue and the sun is honey gold and Garreg Mach cathedral has been entirely reclaimed by nature: vines and trees wrap up to the building roof, twining like a lover’s embrace, pillowed by swathes of moss upon the stone. Flowers open like fireworks exploding in a night sky of every color Byleth could imagine and several she did not know until this moment. The scent is lush and wild and almost as maddening as the taste of Dima's throat and it is _familiar_ , terrifying as the sense-memory takes her back to a paradise she did not build with _her_ covenants and _her_ dreams and the waters of life flowing like rivers in _her_ hands.

 _Her_ paradise in this world, her utopia. An echo of a lost age, roaring to life as Byleth and Dima bloomed and melted in each other's arms. A proclamation that this is _Byleth’s_ world to shape now, beginning with the omega she’s finally claimed for all the world to see.

She swallows, and turns to Dima, who is already gap-mouthed and staring at her with panicked questions Byleth can’t answer, his hand gripping hers almost tight enough to break something.

“What. In the everliving _fuck_ ,” Felix begins in his quietest, most vicious voice, “ _did you idiots do?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: confronting the real world, and what goes up, must come down.
> 
> Guys ask me about Byleth's office. I can't believe I spent an extra thousand words on that stupid office but it's glorious and my new favorite headcanon. Everything in that office sparks joy.
> 
> In the meantime, the next two chapters are getting yet another rewrite to deal with the fact to account for some last minute plot-shattering decisions, so there might be a slight delay. Or not. Now that the Animal Crossing fever's broken I'm feeling better about my progress. Anyway, your comments continue to feed my soul and inspire me to greater heights.


	15. fifteen (how we kissed and killed each other)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You should never have claimed me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: mental health downward spiral. Teacher/student relationship crossing the line. There is an instance of (unintentional) physical partner violence due to said mental health episode; please hit 'more notes' and check the summary for a description of the scene. Please heed all warnings and take care of yourself.
> 
> Folks, I'll be straight with you. Many of you have speculated this story isn't going to end well. Without spoiling anything, I'll say that HS/DN is just the beginning of this universe. While there are plans to pilot these two to a Good End, the narrative arc of this story stops far short of that point. If you need to bow out because shit's too real in your own life or in the world, the best stopping point was the end of last chapter. So go ahead and hit the back button. No judgment. I know it's rough out there, especially for my fellow Americans. Stay safe and take care of yourselves.
> 
> Chapter title still from [Sober II](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8j-PqSFHcc), because nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.
> 
> Apologies for the absurd length of this chapter (10K!), but there wasn't a good spiritual place to split it. Also, it's been over a month, so giving y'all a big chunk feels right. This and the next chapter haven't been easy even for me to revisit, but on the plus side, the prequel's shitty first draft is now _much_ farther along thanks to my procrastination. We'll keep on trucking to that Good End, folks.
> 
> BTW, if folks want to start getting fic updates via twitter, you can follow me [@strangelylit](https://twitter.com/strangelylit). It'll mostly be fic updates because I mouth off elsewhere, but who knows?

**ETHEREAL MOON 1180**

“Do you know the legend associated with the Goddess Tower?”

Byleth watched the horizon from the tower balcony. It was peaceful up here. She’d never much cared for peace, but she’d never much cared for anything before. Tonight, with galaxies swirling above and music floating from the distance, maybe Byleth could learn to care.

She turned to gaze at Dimitri. Perhaps it was not galaxies or music that made her wax poetic about peace. Perhaps it was the person standing next to her, the one who took up the burden of killing to preserve the safety of others.

A person, Byleth now suspected, who was not equipped to make that bargain with the universe. “I’ve heard it.”

He looked surprised, and that surprised her in turn. “Is that right? You don't strike me as the sort to enjoy stories like that.”

Byleth turned back to the stars. Did Dimitri think her ignorant? It was impossible not to have heard the story these past few weeks. Then again, she did tell Rhea at the beginning in her best deadpan voice that she’d never heard of the Church of Seiros. (That one made her a little guilty in retrospect.)

“They say that wishes made in this tower will come true. I wonder who came up with such a silly notion.” His bitterness was thick as honey. Strange.

“You don’t believe it?” Neutral. Curious.

Dimitri scoffed. Like Felix, the sharp snarl of his face. A bitterness shared. Not so different.

“Legends are legends, nothing more. I doubt there are many who really believe that wishes can be granted. The goddess just watches over us from above… that is all. No matter how hard someone begs to be saved, she would never so much as offer her hand. And even if she did, we lack the means to reach out and grasp it. That's how I feel about her.” He looked back to Byleth, posture stiff as if he were waiting for her disapproval.

There were, by Byleth’s reckoning, two types of people who did not believe in the goddess’s power. There were those for whom the goddess’s dominion over Fódlan was a nonentity, such as Claude or Shamir, and there were those who were still angry with the goddess for not exercising that power in the way they wanted.

Beside her, Sothis sat upon the balcony rail. “Which type are you?”

 _Neither,_ Byleth told her. _I don’t believe in their goddess, but… I do believe in you._

“Hmph. Perhaps I could be convinced to believe in you as well,” Sothis replied, but she beamed like rainbows stretching over mountains and valleys, and that was good enough for Byleth.

(Perhaps there was only one type of non-believer, because, by Byleth’s reckoning, the second kind were often the truest believers of all. They were the ones who needed a miracle the most.)

“In any case… I suppose there's no harm in passing the time with silly legends. What do you say, Professor? Care to make a wish?”

Truest believer. Sothis nodded in agreement.

“After you.” Neutral. Curious.

“A wish of my own… I suppose my wish… is for a world in which no one would ever be unjustly taken from us. Or… something along those lines.”

She smiled at him, and he flushed that lovely peaches-and-cream she wanted to lick off a spoon. As if he were honey in her tea, or night-blooming flowers redolent with sweet poison. “That's a great wish.”

“Thank you, Professor,” he said with that smile she liked, one with the dimples. Dimitri was brighter than any star in that big sky whenever she complimented him. He ducked his head away, unexpectedly shy. There’was a faint whiff of honey in the air, the bittersweetness she longed to lick. “Although, at a time like this… perhaps it would make more sense for me to wish that we'll be together forever. What do you think?”

_I think you’d look beautiful spread out like a feast in my bed. I think you’d be helpless and candy-sweet as I held you down and fucked you into the mattress. I think you’d be perfect with my teeth in your throat._

_I think in a just world you’d be **mine**._

Dimitri laughed, breaking Byleth’s reverie. Bittersweet honey and poison flowers faded into blood and rot. “Well now, Professor! You must admit I've improved in the art of joke-telling.”

Untrue.

“Was it?”

“I—” He swallowed, ashamed. “I'm sorry… I guess that was rather thoughtless of me.”

Untrue.

“Honestly… I do regret saying such a thing. Please think nothing of it.”

_Lie._

“I've blurted out irresponsible things like that to my classmates. Promises that we'll see each other again and the like. I have no business making such promises for the future. There are certain things that I must accomplish, even if it means risking my life. I may not even have a future to promise to someone.”

(Not if Byleth had anything to say about it.)

A ghost of a touch on her shoulder. Sothis. “Careful. Not even you can protect him from what we witnessed in your office.”

As if Byleth needed the reminder. Her father was still riding her ass about Dimitri’s blood fugue at Remire. Seteth had sent letters to reliable Kingdom allies to get a better portrait of Dimitri’s post-Duscur behavior, but his questions had to be vague to keep from provoking the very crisis they feared by pulling him from field duty. He received few responses, and all of them cited how Dimitri’s almost immediate presentation after the Tragedy kept him quarantined to the royal residential wing until the Gideon Uprisings in Wyvern Moon 1178, two months shy of his sixteenth birthday.

Seteth’s next step was to interview the Blue Lions, but other than Felix, Byleth feared they’d play dumb out of misguided loyalty to Dimitri. They were already covering for him in class; she’d noticed suspicious similarities between his recent work and Annette or Dedue’s. Hanneman approached Byleth two days ago, laying out how Dimitri’s last two sets of algebra proofs had identical logic mistakes to Sylvain’s. Byleth almost hadn’t recognized the messy scrawl from those assignments compared to Dimitri’s usual tight, heavy-handed script, but the high slant of the crossed ‘t’s was unmistakably Dimitri’s hand. Unless Seteth could get Felix to open up and tell them why he insisted Dimitri was a boar, something concrete enough for them to push for additional testing, there might not be a way to keep Dimitri off the field next month.

That left Byleth stuck waiting for the inevitable crash, praying she’d be there to cushion the blow.

“We should head back soon,” Dimitri said. “It's rude of me to keep you all to myself. Shall we, Professor?”

Mad honey. Rhododendron. Sweet, beautiful poison, powerful enough to make even a dead heart wish to beat. That’s what Dimitri smelled like to her.

Something in Byleth awakened.

Something in Byleth snarled, contorted with rage at Dimitri being forced to deliver more and more death to appease a goddess that wanted none of it.

Something in Byleth _want want wanted._

 _“_ What do I smell like to you?” Cool. Controlled.

Dull.

Something in Byleth longed to _take_.

“I… I beg your pardon?” Dimitri blinked at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

Untrue. “You heard me.”

Dimitri stared at her, eyes wide and bright, cheeks apple-red. Behind him, Sothis smacked a hand to her forehead. “Professor, I do not think that is—”

_Lie._

“I’m not as oblivious as people think I am,” Byleth snapped. Cold. Commanding. “I hear the talk, and I caught you in the classroom with my coat that day.”

The strangled noise Dimitri made in response had Sothis eyeing him warily. She floated above, studying his marble-hewn face. “Perhaps you should use a divine pulse in the event you killed him.”

Byleth glared at her before remembering to keep her focus on Dimitri, who was having a small breakdown at her revelation.

“Professor,” Dimitri choke-gasped, “I am truly sorry, words cannot express the depth of my shame, I swear I meant no harm, I was on my way to return it and—”

“Dimitri.” Byleth squeezed his shoulder and he froze beneath her mid-lung-rattle. “Just answer the question.”

“I—” Dimitri closed his eyes and leaned closer, breathing her in deeply. His face fell slack as if he’d been drugged.

“Chamomile,” he replied.

Ah. Disappointing, but expected. As she moved away from the balcony rail, he continued. “The chamomile tea you brew in your office when you invite me to join you. You steep it longer for me and the ginger cookies are always sharp with the honey jar open and tea with you, in your office, that’s what you smell like to me and I don’t even know if that makes sense—”

Oh.

_Oh._

“Oh,” Sothis said. Bug-eyed with mouth open bug-catching wide in pure shock. “ _Oh._ ”

 _Yes,_ Byleth agreed. _Oh._

“—and I know how foolish and reductive it sounds to say that you smell like being with you but I fear I have no other way to describe—”

“He is still babbling,” Sothis remarked as if commenting upon the weather, and he was, in fact, still babbling. Oh. “But this is your cue, not mine.”

Sothis vanished and Byleth took her cue. She grabbed Dimitri’s uniform and dragged his mouth to hers.

* * *

**LONE MOON 1185**

Ingrid and Sylvain wait; they are careful, patient predators in banked flame and icy undertows. Felix is lightning on the ocean, the air heavy with nectar, conducting the electricity that leaves ozone searing her nose.

A jolt of pure fear bleeds into Byleth’s mind, and she knows it isn’t hers. Dima’s hand grips her arm tighter. Byleth focuses on the sensation and follows it to its cause, curious, as it leads behind Felix’s visible rage and to Ingrid and Sylvain’s subtle-but-present alpha aggression. Byleth turns to Dima, blinking as she untangles the implications.

Dima is… _afraid._ Afraid of alphas.

It’s the last thing Byleth expected, given how quick he is to launch himself against the nastiest alpha targets on any field of engagement. Looking back, however, it makes a certain twisted sense. Destroy them before the fear overwhelms him. He buries it so well not even Felix sniffs it out, but Byleth feels what hides beneath the layers of rage and misery now.

There’s no avoiding this confrontation, however. She pushes down the urge to bare her teeth at Ingrid or Sylvain. No one can take Dima from her anymore. With another glance over at the lush greenery that has overtaken the cathedral facade, she turns back to Felix. “What is it you think we did?”

His face contorts with pure fury, fists rising, ozone searing her eyes and nose. “I _trusted_ you! And you—you—”

Trusted her with _what?_ What exactly had any of them expected? Looking back five days, what the hell had _Byleth_ expected?

(A chance to take what she'd never taken, from a moment that never happened.)

“Felix,” Sylvain warns, even voice belying his rage, “we should hear Professor Eisner out first. We owe her that much.”

“Agreed.” Ingrid's jaw clenches tighter. “What do you have to say for yourself, Professor?”

Byleth opens her mouth to answer, but Dima straightens next to her, squeezing her arm in reassurance. The terror burns away in cleansing fire, and he bares his throat to face his friends. “Can you see my claim mark, Ingrid?” he asks with a tired smile. “I haven’t seen it yet. How bright is it?”

The war of emotions on Ingrid’s stoic face is louder than an aria: shock, as her eyes widen upon the mark; swallowing, as she processes the implications, then mingling of joy and shame, as she sees how very happy _Dima_ is. Tears well in her eyes, threatening to overtake all else. “Your Highness,” she whispers, a smile threatening to cross her lips. “I’ve… I’ve never seen such a bright mark. It’s beautiful.”

Sylvain looks to the ground. His war is subtler, though he’s no less immune.

“Ingrid’s right, Your Highness. Congrats, you two.” His resignation makes Byleth’s throat seize.

“Felix?” Dimitri asks, uncertain, and there’s an anxiety spike to accompany it.

Felix looks away as well. “It’s…”

He sighs as if conceding defeat in some great war. Almond, pure and clean. “It’s a beautiful mark… Dimitri.”

Byleth glances at Felix, his eyes burning pale amber. The rage has been extinguished, and what's left is… frightening.

“I knew it would be,” Dima curls around Byleth, both seeking and providing her protection. He rests his head atop hers and she can feel the dimples, the breadth of his smile. The depth of his joy, and also his quiet warning that _no one_ will part them again. “It’s the professor’s mark, after all.”

Dima’s joy is a bright, bubbling thing, and Byleth can’t bear the thought of anyone popping it. Judging by the mingled shock, shame, and hope on all three of his friends’ faces, they can’t either. Even Felix can’t bring himself to say more, though his lingering dread sends chills through her.

“Professor.” Ingrid’s eyes search Byleth’s. Her eyes are glassy, her tears still at the tipping point of falling. “Why?”

Byleth sighs, and pulls Dima even closer to her. Now she curls protectively around his heart. “He _asked,_ Ingrid.”

Ingrid’s tears finally fall.

* * *

Spring has come to Garreg Mach.

Above them, the sun is bright, almost summer-warm, and the air is thick with spring’s nectar. Around them, almost every inch of Garreg Mach is _verdant_ where it is not blooming _crimson_ under an _azure_ sky. Flowers of every color explode from shrubs, vines, and trees, crawling up the walls of every building. Below them, pillowy moss spreads in every cobblestone of the bridge, mushrooms peeking between tufts of meadow grass groaning with wildflowers. In five days, Garreg Mach has been almost completely reclaimed by nature. Bees and insects buzz everywhere, birds chirping lilting melodies.

Rhododendrons are by far the most common sight, bushes springing up and spilling over walkways and stairways overnight. Some of these don’t even flower in spring. Byleth doesn’t even _recognize_ some of these plants, despite her many hours in the greenhouse with Ashe and Dedue, Dimitri sometimes joining them to perform heavy labor tasks.

Okay. Yeah. She sees why everyone is freaking out.

(Byleth might be freaking out with them. Maybe she should have spent more time thinking about her ability to manipulate crops into growing faster after all.)

“When did this start?” Byleth asks Ingrid. She makes a point of not looking at any of the knights or staff milling around and whispering to themselves. Before they’d stepped out beyond the cathedral, Byleth had readjusted Dima’s cape to settle over his claim mark. It glows faintly through the thick broadcloth and fur, impossible to spot from more than a few feet away. Which is still exceptionally strong for a brand new claim mark, and Byleth has enough problems.

Ingrid’s lips tighten. “Snowmelt started almost immediately. Plant growth started about two and a half days ago, and flowers bloomed yesterday.”

Well. That’s a heavy-handed metaphor if Byleth ever saw one.

Dima doesn’t notice their conversation, but he stops and stares, open-mouthed, at the green and the color around them. A bee buzzes by his face. _Ridiculous._

“The growth started slowing late last night,” Sylvain adds, “which is how we… guessed when to meet you two.”

For once, Felix has nothing to add to the conversation. His gaze is unreadable, though the cycling of his scent worries Byleth. Worries Sylvain, too, if she’s reading it right. Both their pupils are dilated, and Sylvain hovers more than usual. Felix moves in careful, deliberate steps, like a drunk pretending to be sober. More drops of sweat bead from his forehead and the bitter almond scent is sharp in Byleth’s nose. “Felix—”

Byleth steps forward to examine him more closely, but Felix bites back, “I’m _fine_ ,” and Sylvain growls, “He’s _fine_ , Professor.”

Before she can argue, Dima tugs her back to him, Byleth crashing into his chest. She arches an eyebrow at him, but Dima’s face is impassive.

“I want to see my mark,” Dima announces, cutting into her scattered thoughts. His eye closes as he leans into Byleth. He’s almost as unsteady on his feet as Felix. He’ll need to eat soon and rest again. They both will.

“Mercedes and Annette are at the bathhouse with some of your things. There are mirrors there, Your Highness.” Ingrid touches Byleth’s back. “Professor…”

Byleth waits, but Ingrid steps back, mouth tighter than ever. “We should let you two get cleaned up.”

Ingrid grabs Sylvain’s hand, who grabs Felix’s in turn, and Felix practically tumbles into Sylvain’s chest. Pressed against Sylvain, Felix shoots fresh daggers at Byleth, molten iron and lightning crashing over orchards of almond blossoms. His undereye bags are almost as deep as Dima’s.

“What are we telling people?” Byleth asks.

“Cyril told us that Lady Rhea used to go down to the Holy Tomb for a few days at a time to pray. We told folks you were doing the same.” Sylvain shoots a pointed look at Byleth. “Guess this is one way to spread the goddess’s blessing.”

Byleth glares at Sylvain. “Any other lines you need to get out of your system?”

“I wrote out a list, but I left it back in my room,” Sylvain says cheerfully. “I’m never letting you live this down, Professor.”

“Noted.”

Sylvain laughs, and even Ingrid smiles weakly as she wipes her forehead. Then Felix stumbles and groans. Sylvain is at his side, the perfect attentive alpha. Ingrid steps forward a moment after, her eyes fixed on Felix’s throat, but Sylvain shows the barest hint of teeth while draping that easy arm around Felix. Dimitri tugs Byleth closer again with another soft frisson of fear.

“Is… everything all right?” Byleth asks. Sylvain’s draped arm looks like the beginning of a chokehold, and Felix, for once, isn’t complaining. He rests his teeth in Sylvain’s forearm but doesn’t bite.

“It’s fine,” all four say in unison, and _that_ stinks worse than Lorenz’s old cologne, but Byleth is too tired to push back at the moment.

They’re about to part at the bathhouse door when Byleth remembers. “Wait.” Byleth taps Sylvain on the shoulder. “Could one of you go to the tower and get Dima’s armor and our weapons?”

All three of them exchange horrified glances. “Uh, of course, Professor,” Ingrid says, her nose wrinkling.

Byleth blinks. “What’s wrong?”

Sylvain scrubs his face. “Nothing, Professor. The smell of someone else’s post-heat is… a lot. Overwhelming.”

“You wouldn’t mind if we asked someone else to do it, would you?” Ingrid asks, drumming her fingers. “Obviously someone we trust with His Highness’s things. Maybe Cyril?”

Oof. “Not Cyril,” Byleth says, shaking her head. “He might kill me if we asked. Or try, anyway.”

“Please don’t joke about that.”

The edge in Dima’s voice that could cut a mountain quicker and cleaner than the Sword of the Creator. He curls around her, rigid as a shell, and Byleth holds back a sigh. Too much to hope he’d processed his feelings about her non-death back in the tower.

She tips his chin to face her, though his eye stubbornly remains shut. “Okay,” she promises. “I won’t.”

His sigh of relief relaxes both of them. Straightening, he opens his eye. Despite his post-heat haze, he’s still more present than she’s seen in months.

“Forgive us, please.” Dima’s voice is quiet, but there is an emphasis on the please as he speaks to his friends. “There is much we must discuss, but for now, I wish to see my beloved’s mark.”

* * *

In the bathhouse, Dima barely notices Annette and Mercedes, save to grip Byleth harder when they come too close. Still, with a prompt from Byleth, he greets them both in distant, polite tones. Worlds away from the guttural snarl they’d all come to expect these past months as a best-case scenario, but bringing with it new concerns.

Instead, he drifts towards the mirrors, shedding his cape to study his claim mark. He’s immediately transfixed by the sight. As Byleth prepares their bath with Mercedes’s assistance, Dima runs his fingers along the physical wound and the magic shining from it glows brighter, seeming to hypnotize him in its intensity. His fascination with the claim mark, evidence of his belonging to her, fills her with pride.

(Now everyone sees what they’ve both known all along.)

It also fills her with trepidation.

“He seems much calmer,” Mercedes says to Byleth. They’re sitting by the tub together, heating the water with their combined magic. Mercedes’s fire spell is weaker than usual; there’s not much more heat than Byleth can produce, and Byleth is still recovering from the rut. As they finish, Mercedes wipes the sweat from her brow as the magic dissipates. “I’ve never seen a mark that bright before.”

Neither has Byleth, and she wants to believe it’s evidence of the strength of her love for Dima. That it could be that simple.

“We brought you two some treats, and Ashe and Marianne are on breakfast duty,” Annette adds. Maybe that’s why the entire bathhouse smells like a bakery today. “They’re saving plenty of food for you two. Got to keep your strength up! Back at the School of Sorcery, I went straight back to studying for exams and forgot to eat after my rut. I ended up missing all of them anyway because I couldn’t get out of bed for three days!”

Mercedes laughs fondly and reaches for Annette’s hand to squeeze, dragging her closer. Annette drops a kiss atop Mercedes’s head. Mercedes giggles dizzily, her eyes fever-bright. That’s… new. “It’s true, Professor. I had to spoon-feed Annie beef tea until she got the strength back for solid foods.”

“You just liked having me stuck in a bed, Mercie,” Annette quips, and she takes a heavy sniff of Mercedes’s fully-bared throat.

Okay. Yeah, definitely a new development. “Anything you two want to tell me?”

They turn to her with identical blank expressions.

“What do you mean, Professor?” Mercedes asks, tilting her head.

Byleth shrugs. Guess they’re still playing coy. Even if they look as confused as Byleth feels and smell like several bakeries. “Never mind. Thanks for the warning, Annette. Thank you to all of you.”

She means it. Despite Felix’s lingering anger and fear, the Lions heard her out, and have been cautiously supportive. Byleth hadn’t been prepared for her post-rut crash, not anticipating there’d be a rut to crash from, but Dima seems to have fallen into a daze post-heat, pushing her back into the role of caretaker. The Lions are picking up much of the necessary slack.

“We found some good broadcloth from a merchant,” Mercedes continues, “so I sewed two new shirts and hose for Dimitri. The new gambeson will take me a few days more, since it’s quilted and I intend to reinforce the straps against his pulling—oh, goddess! Professor, I just realized I left Dimitri’s new things in my chambers!”

“Don’t worry, Mercie, we’ll go back and get them.” Annette gives Mercedes a reassuring hug… that goes on for twenty seconds and includes Annette squeaking in delight when Mercedes pinches her ass. Okay, something _really_ weird is going on with them. “I bet the Professor and His Highness don’t need us hovering for their baths anyway. Congratulations again, by the way. I’m so happy for both of you!”

Byleth smiles and hopes it’s convincing. “Thanks, Annette. I’ll see you two in a bit?”

“You sure will!” Annette flounces off, Mercedes dragged along in her wake.

Once they’ve left the bathing chamber, Byleth sits beside Dima, taking his hand in hers. When she tugs his hand to the bath, Dima startles, spinning his head to face her. “Bath is ready.”

“Thank you, Alpha,” Dimitri says, his eye drifting back to the mirror even as she pulls him to the tub.

Byleth spends the first couple minutes laying back, her body soaking in the steaming lavender-scented water. With the energy of the rut fading, her muscles ache in ways that put most training routines to shame. She can only imagine what Dima feels, and her attempts to probe through their bond more come back cloudy, uncertain. Byleth is reluctant to do so anyway, particularly since Dima seems so unmotivated to explore her mind. She’s not sure if that should bother her.

As Byleth sits up again, a current of tension thrums down her spine. Dima faces away from her, his eye distant and his shoulders hunched. When she touches his shoulder, he flinches before looking back to Byleth and relaxing. Byleth holds up a sponge. “You never did wash me.”

“Oh, I—” His eye turns glassy for a moment before he snaps back to focus. He smiles, more tenuous than before. “I do not know if that is a good idea.”

Byleth cocked her head at him. “Why not?”

“I’m—my strength is recovering,” Dima explains, although it sounds off to Byleth’s ears. The scented bathwater makes picking out his scent difficult. “I could break you.”

The last part is low, almost under his breath. Strange. “I don’t think you can, Dima.”

“Do not be so sure our bond will protect you.” Harsher now. Still facing away.

Byleth blinks. Like everyone, she’s heard the stories of claimed omegas snapping and killing the alphas who claimed them, but even with the nobility’s eagerness to protect their own, they swiftly reject post-mortem the rare alpha who dies at their omega’s hands. The breathtaking level of cruelty required to trigger that sort of tragedy is something Byleth would never show Dima. Besides, that wasn’t what she meant.

“Dima, I fell off a cliff and onto a divine relic,” Byleth reminds him. It’s a relief to say it. “I might be unbreakable. Maybe I should ask Hanneman to run some experiments? I could—”

Dima glowers at Byleth. “I asked you not to say such things.”

“I—” Not worth arguing over when she can smell his terror. “I’m sorry. It’s just…” Byleth considers how to explain. “I don’t know what it means.”

The tension drains from Dima then. He puts his hand to the wound, and for once, it feels solicitous of her. “Forgive me,” Dima murmurs. “Of course you have a right to handle your feelings however you wish. I should not be such a boar when you speak of it.”

“You shouldn’t call yourself that.” Byleth tries not to fantasize about that time she kicked Felix in the nuts while sparring.

Dima chuckles but does not respond. Byleth decides this can wait. “Are you comfortable with my washing your hair?”

Closing his eye, he nods.

Byleth hums an extra-filthy tavern ditty as she washes Dimitri’s hair, amused at the particular pleasure he takes in having his head scratched. His audible sighs and moans of pleasure delight her. When she finishes with his hair, he’s loose-limbed, head tilted back with the ghost of a smile as she helps him with the rest of his body. She plants a kiss on one of the marks she left on his jaw and he grins. As she soaps down his chest, she studies his claim mark.

The mark is curious, gleaming almost like solid jade embedded in his skin. Even ghosting a finger over the bite leaves Dimitri open-mouthed and shivering. Byleth’s possessive streak flares high upon seeing it, but beneath that reaction, she remains uneasy. She saw deep claim marks before coming to Garreg Mach, powerful enough to shine through clothing, but the omegas bearing those had been with their alphas for years. Her understanding is that a claim bite is much like planting a seed, with the bond growing and blooming over time. The strength of this mark, against its newness, seems… invasive. Like the vines now climbing the bathhouse walls, or the azalea bushes that crowd the walkways of the monastery. The potential to crowd out anything else that might grow.

Byleth washes herself down faster than she did Dima, scrubbing days of sweat and grime out of her hair before dunking underwater to rinse. When she pops back to the surface, Dima has his eye squeezed tightly shut.

“Dima?” Byleth asks, uncertain if she should touch him. “Can you talk to me?”

Dima scrubs his face, eye snapping back to focus. “Alpha,” he says with a half-smile and a yawn. He offers her his hand, and Byleth accepts it. “I apologize for my inattentiveness. I am exhausted.”

“Same,” Byleth says, yawning with him. “You can sleep again once you’ve eaten.”

Dima’s face falls. “Will you… stay with me?” he asks in a small voice.

“If you want me, then yes.”

He relaxes, though he makes no move to touch her. Byleth would have found a way to stay close no matter what. Leaving Dima alone right now felt unwise, but that could be her newly heightened alpha instincts demanding he stay close.

She eats a few of the treats Annette left, and when Dima shows no interest, Byleth finds herself using sharp alpha intonations to make him comply. He doesn’t express the same fear at her aggression he did with Sylvain and Ingrid’s; if anything, he appears relieved to have orders to follow.

Long after the water’s cooled, the bathhouse doors open again, and Annette chirps hello. Both of their dresses are rumpled and Mercedes’s usual hat and veil are missing. Byleth steps out of the bath first, offering a hand to Dima, but he does not accept it.

Byleth sniffs the air. The heavy-duty bakery scent is back, and the source is…

…Mercedes smiles as she plops a black bundle in Dima’s hands. “Here you are, Dimitri.”

Dima eyes the clothing with suspicion. “Are these my things?”

“Your clothes are being laundered, so I took the liberty of making new ones.” Mercedes’s face never falters, but Byleth catches a touch of mold in Mercedes’s bakery scent. “Bakery” might be understating how potent the scent is. Byleth feels like she’s swimming through a giant pantry of sweetbreads. Only Annette’s fall breeze scent cuts the intensity of it.

After blankly staring at the bundle a moment longer, Dima accepts. He gives Mercedes a small but honest smile. “Thank you, Mercedes. If you don’t mind, beloved?”

Dima looks at Byleth expectantly. It takes Byleth a second to work out that he’s asking her permission to get dressed. That’s… weird. She nods at him, vaguely mystified, and he leaves to another partition to change.

Mercedes watches Dima go as closely as Byleth does. Annette’s scent intensifies and she casts about for Mercedes’s hand. Mercedes laces her fingers tightly with Annette’s, her breath heavy.

“He’s better, right?” Annette asks as she gives Byleth her clothing.

“He seems better.” The words are slow, drawn from Mercedes as if pulled with a needle. She steps closer to Annette

“Father has to see how good this is for His Highness.” Annette’s face darkens. “He’s not going to be happy.”

Gilbert is rarely happy these days, but that is not Byleth’s problem. “I’m more worried about Rodrigue.”

She drops her towel as she starts to change when Annette screams. Mercedes is pure white, hands flying to her mouth as she gasps, and Annette’s eyes are wide as marbles, her scent a hurricane as she clutches Mercedes for support. “Professor! What is… that wound…!”

Byleth looks down. Oh, right. Giant glowing gash. Her lack of modesty screwed her.

Dima rushes back, confused, and still half-dressed. The doorframe splinters apart under his grasp. “What is it? Beloved?”

Nope. Byleth can’t do this right now. Her crest is still barely recovered, but it’s got enough juice for a thirty-second pulse back, leaving her shaky and nauseated from the effort. It’s a relief to step behind the screen and lean against the wall, even if both women’s scents take on stronger notes of anxiety.

Still, they pick up where they left off in the timeline. “Father has to see how good this is for His Highness,” Annette repeats from beyond the screen. “He’s not going to be happy.”

Byleth dutifully recites her line as she pulls on her shorts, keeping her towel wrapped around her torso to avoid any glow from escaping.

“You’d have to ask Felix or Sylvain about the duke,” Annette says with a soft sigh. “I’ll talk to Father, but I don’t know how much it will help. But I’m sure he’ll come around. Not like he has much of a choice. What does he know about this stuff, anyway? Mother’s claim mark is no longer visible.” The last part is said with quiet resignation, an acceptance akin to a death.

Byleth seizes upon the topic change as she finishes dressing and steps out beyond the screen. “What do you know about claims?”

Mercedes strokes her chin, now so close to Annette she could be leaning on her for support. A bead of sweat moves down her jaw and into her gown. “Not as much as I would like,” she admits. “The regional churches speak so strongly against using presentation magic for anything other than the true claim that there is little formal study. Bonded patients heal better than most, and when I’ve treated claimed patients, their healing capabilities far outstrip even most crests. Since the war started, I’ve been swapping case studies with other physicians across the continent, but there are no hard data.”

“It was almost completely forbidden even at the School of Sorcery,” Annette adds.

“I see.” Disappointing. Seems Byleth is on her own.

Annette, however, is not so easily deterred. Her face screws up into her Thinking Expression, only relenting when she comes up with a solution. Mercedes pats her in encouragement. “Come to think of it… I heard Linhardt von Hevring was heading a research lab near Nuvelle dedicated to crest magic. Remember how obsessed with presentation magic he was? The way he used to bug Dorothea about her pack? You should ask Dr. von Essar if he knows more.”

“Maybe. Thanks.” Byleth smiles, rueful. Linhardt had been practically inert as alphas go, yet presentation magics were one of his favorite topics. Back in their academy days, his fascination took him some borderline inappropriate directions in both conversations and in research paper topics. Seteth hauled him into his office more than once for a lecture. Now that obsession might come in handy if Linhardt is willing to share with them.

Then the door opens, the frame almost cracking with the force Dima uses to open it. “Beloved, are you—”

Dima glances between the three of them. “Sorry. I thought I heard something,” he offers, sheepish.

Byleth approaches him. When he doesn’t move, she snakes an arm around Dima’s waist; he pulls her so close it nearly knocks Byleth off her feet, crushing her in his embrace before abruptly releasing her.

From the corner of her eye, Byleth sees Mercedes’s external beatific calm falter, and Annette’s eyes narrow in that wary way of hers when she’s uncovered some thorny issue to turn over in her mind. Perhaps they also sensed whatever is prickling in the back of Byleth’s skull. “We should get breakfast,” Mercedes says in an excellent impersonation of a calm voice. Byleth winces at how tightly she grips Annette’s side. “I’m sure Ashe and Marianne would love to join us.”

“Yeee-yeah!” Annette’s false calm leaves more to be desired. “Oh, and I talked to Ingrid about the tower. Don’t worry about it one bit! We’ll get His Highness’s armor and oversee cleanup like we did for you with Dorothea.”

Byleth suppresses a gasp at the sharp spasm that passes through her at the mention of Dorothea’s name. Looking up at Dima, his face reveals nothing, but she picks up hints of smoke from his scent. “We’re pretty tired.”

“Oh, that’s fine!” Mercedes giggles nervously. “I have, um, rounds in the infirmary to complete. Annie, could you take a look at a patient for me? I think she might be hexed with dark magic…”

“Sure. Thanks,” Byleth says, terser than she intended. She looks at Dimitri, hoping for some kind of reassurance, but his eye is fixed on a horizon Byleth can’t see.

* * *

When they reach the dining hall, Byleth takes one look at Dima and decides neither of them is prepared for someone to walk up and start asking questions. She leads him to a bench near the fishing hole instead. A few supply crates are nearby. With a quick nod from Byleth, Dima picks out the crate closest to table height and situates it in front of the bench.

Claim bond teamwork for the win.

A splash catches her eye. The pond is teeming with fish, the bright rainbow scales of a goddess messenger flashing as its leaps out of the water. Before the heat, Byleth was lucky to eke out a couple of crayfish and goby. Behind the pond, the greenhouse appears to be the center hub for the wild growth, the door concealed off by leafy branches while vines twine around the structural supports. Enormous shade trees peek out past the inner grounds’ walls that Byleth does not remember from before.

“I’ll be right back,” Byleth says with a soft stroke of Dima’s cheek, and he closes his eye as she pulls away. He leans his back against the wall. His hunched shoulders and dead-eyed glare send anyone lingering nearby scuttling in another direction.

Once in the dining hall proper, Ashe waves at Byleth from the kitchen, with Marianne on cleanup duty behind him. “Good to see you, Professor,” Ashe says with a wobbly smile, stopping to wipe his forehead with a cloth. He has a tray with two meat pies, but he trips as he walks to the counter. Marianne, with a lightning-quick speed never seen on a battlefield, catches him. Her grip is so sure that Ashe doesn’t even drop the pies. He stares up at her, briefly mesmerized by whatever is there, before shaking it off and moving towards the counter.

Marianne glares directly at Byleth, and her eyes are… flat. Strange. It takes Byleth a moment to place that they’ve developed a faint glow, much like Byleth’s eyes gained after her merge with Sothis.

“Marianne?” Byleth asks, swallowing. Something isn’t right. Ashe sets down the pies in front of her, and the _hatred_ in Marianne’s eyes could burn down the entire monastery. She snarls at Byleth, and… wait, are Marianne’s _teeth_ longer?

Marianne startles, gasps, and covers her teeth with her hands. Byleth makes out her yelling “I’m sorry!” as she flees from the dining hall.

“What was that about?” Byleth asks, turning back to Ashe.

“Uh… ” Ashe gives her a hazy glance that reminds her uncomfortably of Dima. “Dunno. Why can’t I smell you, Professor? Usually, you smell so _good_.”

What? What is he—?

“Ashe,” Byleth begins in her sharpest tones, “are you going into heat?”

He flutters up at her a few moments, confused. “That can’t be right,” he says in a very distant voice. “My last heat was six months ago, and my cycle is fourteen months. And I take silphium, just like you told us to!”

“You know that silphium tea doesn’t completely prevent sympathetic heat, right?” Byleth asks.

“It doesn’t?” He blinks. “Then why do we take it? It tastes awful.”

Ashe smells like a cinnamon-roll factory, Byleth observes distantly. He starts twirling his short hair. “It reduces sensitivity to sympathetic heat reactions,” Byleth explains, feeling as if she were talking to a very small child. “It buys you time to get away.”

“Oh. Um. Well, I’m pretty low-reactivity, except that one time we all got caught flatfoot with the demonic beast. I didn’t even go off when you stayed with Dorothea,” Ashe brags, but he’s swaying on his feet, grinning dumbly as he leans against the counter. “So no, I don’t think it’s my heat. That can’t be right.”

 _Famous last words (never) said,_ a voice suspiciously close to Sothis’s whispers.

“Onion gratin soup?” Ashe holds up a second tray with two bowls. Byleth can’t smell it over the cinnamon roll scent. “You’re with His Highness, right? Is he here? Does that mean everything is okay? Did he like the stock I made? Why can’t I catch your scent, Professor?”

Good questions all. “We’ll find out,” Byleth replies. Bit melodramatic, but so’s the mood. “Maybe you should go lie down. Preferably somewhere with a reinforced door.”

Ashe’s face is flushed bright red. “Good idea. I should stop by the laundress first,” he murmurs vaguely. He pulls at the collar of his gambeson. “I could use some extra blankets. Maybe Ingrid could help me carry them, or I could find where Marianne ran off to…or both, both could work too…”

Yeah, Byleth is far too hungry and tired for this. She grabs her food and a wine bottle and heads back to where Dima waits.

* * *

Their impromptu picnic begins comfortably enough, both of them tackling the food like it’s their last meal. Now that Byleth knows Dima cannot taste anything, Byleth sees how mechanical the act is for Dima; he slurps soup from the bowl directly and barely bothers with chewing the pie before he gulps it down. (Also, he left his table manners somewhere in the wilds. His lack of chewing is a mixed blessing for her eyeballs.)

Instead, Byleth focuses on savoring her meat pie. To her pleasant surprise, Dima’s eyes briefly widen. Byleth hides her smile as she picks up another bite after his, and this time he lingers over the food in his mouth, though he does not do her the courtesy of closing it. When he tries the soup, she takes a spoonful of that as well, and he finally catches on to what she’s doing, eye wide with surprise.

She’s so focused on their shared eating experience that the whiff of smoke creeps up on Byleth. When she looks up, Dima is glaring at her. “Why were you speaking of Linhardt von Hevring with Annette earlier?”

Byleth raises her eyebrows. Not what she expected. “We were discussing bonds. I don’t know as much about them as I should. Linhardt’s become something of an expert and Annette suggested we reach out.”

“He’s an Imperial,” Dima growls. He practically stabs his soup with his spoon, drops spilling across the crate.

Byleth takes a long sip of wine to steady herself. “Academics from all nations still correspond on non-military research topics.”

“So now we invite spies into our midst?”

Deep breath. “We invite science back into a renowned academic institution.”

“That ends immediately,” Dima snarls, eye hot.

“You may propose that at our next council meeting,” Byleth counters. Manuela would drag her hungover ass out of the infirmary to clock him with a wine bottle if he tried enforcing _that._ Hanneman would help her. It might be a good bonding exercise for them if Dima could be bothered to attend a war council meeting.

Dima doesn’t respond. Predictable.

They continue eating in silence, storm clouds rolling over Dima’s head, rot creeping into his scent. Byleth closes her eyes to grasp the connection between them and finds something in her chest that’s taut as a bowstring, and slightly frayed. She strokes it, feather-light and slow, and even as Dima’s body relaxes and the honey returns, the anguish on his face deepens. Byleth studies him, confused.

“You shouldn’t have done it.” His voice is a rasp, harsh against Byleth’s already strained nerves. “You should never have claimed me.”

That _hurts_. Byleth’s chest is heavy and the food in her mouth as tasteless as it would be upon his tongue. Swallowing, she looks at him. “You asked me to,” Byleth reminds him. “Did you not want me to do it?”

Dima’s chuckle is rusty, broken. “Since when has what I wanted ever mattered?”

“It matters to me.” More anger slips out than she intends. “It always has.”

His head hangs low, elbows bracketing him as he pulls at his hair. “I can feel you,” he says, like a secret, a confession. “You are so much _more_ than you pretend to be. I knew I was unworthy to even look upon you, but to _know_ how insignificant I truly am—”

Byleth stares him down. “I am exactly who I have always been.”

“ _Liar,_ ” he whispers, empty-eyed, and he’s not wrong. She’s not who she was, she’s not someone her father would recognize. Some days Byleth almost doesn’t recognize herself.

Almost.

“Dima,” Byleth asks quietly, “please look at me,” but he can’t; every time he tries he squints away as if she’s asked him to stare into the sun. As if the wild, boundless thing inside her scalds him. He whimpers and buries his face in his hands. Sighing, she tries again, a command instead of a request. “Dima. Look at me.”

This time Dima listens. His face is pale and his lower lip trembles, but his gaze is riveted, transfixed by her. “Beloved,” he whispers. “My alpha, you shouldn’t be chained to a—”

“Stop.” Byleth picks up his hand, clammy and limp in hers. “I chose _you_ , Dima. I would do it again.”

She strokes his palm with her thumb. “You must be tired.”

Byleth is tired. She aches for sleep. Dima nods in agreement, his head moving in a slow, rhythmic jerk. “Tired,” he repeats, an echo. “Beloved, I’m so tired.”

“Let’s go back to my room to sleep.”

Another nod, his eye closing. “ _Please,_ ” he whispers, and Byleth can't shake the sense he's asking for something else. Yet Dima permits her to take his hand, and lead him away, and for now, that must be enough.

* * *

Byleth has been sleeping in her father’s old quarters since she returned to Garreg Mach, but she hesitates at the thought of taking Dima there. Her old room was a wreck, with a destroyed door and a shredded mattress reminiscent of how omegas sometimes shredded old objects for nesting materials. The third-floor staff quarters and nobles' guest rooms were stripped by looters, slowly being restored as people returned to Garreg Mach.

That’s how they end up in the Archbishop’s chambers, which Seteth once offered her. Byleth declined at the time, Cyril’s stink-eye on her. She doesn’t blame him for his resentment. Byleth is no more comfortable being herded into this role than Cyril is watching it happen.

Dima follows her, quiet as he grips her hand as his last lifeline to sanity. As soon as the door shuts, however, Byleth is slammed against it, Dima lifting her as he kisses her, frantic and lost. The hinges crack as her back hits the door. The blood and the rot on his tongue nearly gag her. “Alpha,” he begs as he kisses her, “knot me, _please_.”

Byleth feels herself observe this moment as if once again trapped behind the wall-thick glass behind which she spent most of her life. Dima’s soft against her. Nothing about this performance has her wanting to summon a knot, if she even could, still drained from the frenzy of heat. Her body is screaming for rest.

“Dima,” Byleth groans. “Put me down, please.”

“ _Please._ ” His desperation sets off yet another round of alarms. It’s not the lust-maddened haze of heat, but sharper, more like blind terror.

“Dima, I’m tired,” Byleth protests weakly, her eyes sliding shut even while being held against the door, “and so are you. Come to bed with me.”

He drops her, and Byleth slaps her hand to the wall to steady herself from falling. “You don’t want me anymore, do you?” he asks, more accusation than question. “It’s all right, Professor. I understand why you regret taking a beast for a—”

Growling, Byleth grabs Dima and slots her teeth along his claim mark, biting _hard_. Almost instantly Dima falls limp. Byleth catches him, maneuvering him to the bed. He sprawls out, eyelid fluttering, mewling up at her in confusion.

“Alpha?” he whimpers weakly as he shivers.

Huh. Byleth has no idea how she knew to do that, but it worked.

“We are both going to sleep, Dima,” Byleth tells him with as much alpha authority as she can muster, “and then once we wake up, we are going to _talk._ I will knot you again once my energy’s back.”

That part should be able to go unsaid; he’s beautiful and he’s _hers._ Byleth wants to fully explore Dima without the frenzy of rut driving her impulses. Now, however, the blood and rot choke her lungs.

“Y-yes, Alpha,” Dima mumbles meekly, but when she lays down onto his chest, he stiffens and tries to wriggle away. “N-n-no.”

Byleth, already half-asleep before she laid down, sits up and blinks blearily. “Whanow?”

“My dreams.” His eye is already sliding shut.

“So?” Byleth tries not to scream as her body pleaded with her to sleep off the food coma and the days of rutting and fucking. “We’ve been sleeping together for days now.”

“Different,” he croaks out as he half-rolls himself in an attempt to slide onto the ground. He tries to open his eye to look at her, but he’s too exhausted, partially lolling off the bed. “ _Worse_.”

This is information Byleth could have used _when she asked for it two days ago._ Now she’s too tired to care about some stupid nightmares he’s been having for nine years anyway. “Dima, I can sleep through _bandit attacks_. You _know_ that.”

It’s true; moreover, _he’d_ been the one who told the other Blue Lions not to wake her when bandits tried to raid their camp one night because _he_ felt she’d been overworking herself. Byleth woke up the next morning to their campsite torn apart and several dead bodies being buried. It was the only time Byleth ever gave Dimitri detention.

Dima shakes his head, fussing again. “ _Worse,_ ” he repeats, like that means something to her exhausted mind.

With another quick nip at his neck, Byleth manages to get him compliant enough to arrange back onto the bed. She is far, far too tired for this. “Don’t. Care. Dima, go the fuck to sleep.”

There is more than a little alpha inflection in the statement. Unintentional on Byleth’s part, but she’s too tired not to appreciate how quickly Dima relents, his breath growing slow and even as his body sinks into the mattress.

Okay. That was impressive. Maybe a little scary. Or a lot scary. (Maybe _maybe_ also a little exciting, but Byleth puts a pin in that line of thought right quick.) It's not what she intended, but it gets the job done for today.

Byleth rearranges the covers over Dima and slides underneath next to him. Immediately his hand gropes for her, clasping hers in his. Byleth concentrates on pouring as much love as she can through the fragile strands of their bond, hoping that will be enough to keep his ghosts at bay for one night. The jade of his mark gleams bright over his shirt as sleep takes her.

* * *

Byleth wakes in a charnel house.

Orange blazing sky, smoke rising to the heavens. It’s sunset and impossible to tell where the sky ends and the flames begin. Broken bodies litter the land, dead and dying as the slaughter continues. There’s screaming, but it’s hollow, distant. There’s a quality to everything that reminds Byleth of Ignatz’s old experimental paintings, colors slapdash and splattered across a canvas. A dream, and not hers.

_Duscur._

How, though? How did she get here? Is this another effect of the bond? She’s heard stories about claim-bound lovers sharing the same dreams, but this feels so far beyond that. She is lucid, _present._

Byleth digs through her memory of when Dimitri told her about the Tragedy of Duscur. He’d scrambled under a wrecked carriage to hide after Glenn was cleaved by an axeman. Byleth searches the ground. The crest on Glenn Fraldarius’s armor glows like a beacon, his face in death, identical to Felix’s, twisted into a gruesome near-parody of agony. If this dream is accurate, Glenn suffered for some time before he passed. Everything is so surreal, however, that Byleth doubts the veracity of these memories. The blood and glowing embers raining down certainly suggest some exaggeration.

Still, Byleth follows the pieces of Glenn’s body to a ripped undercarriage. Sure enough, a young boy hides below, shivering with terror. He gasps as she approaches. “ _Please_ ,” he sobs, “please don’t hurt me.”

Byleth kneels and holds out her hand. “I could never hurt you, Dima.”

The boy stares up at her with wide, pleading blue eyes, his long gold hair streaked with blood. More blood trickles down over his face. “No. You… you wouldn’t, would you?”

She smiles at him, as calm and reassuring as she can muster. “Never.”

“Then… then can you help me?” he asks, gesturing at the broken land. “Can you help me save them?”

_Oh, Dima._

Byleth looks around. A severed head that looks like an older, bearded Dimitri yells for vengeance as it rolls past. Everything is distorted, like staring into a warped mirror. This is not her nightmare. Her heart aches for Dima, reliving this every night, but it is not her nightmare. It does not touch her.

She cannot change what happened.

Neither can he.

“Please, help me!” Tears stream from his eyes. “You can do it, can’t you? You can tell me how to save them.”

Byleth remembers _her_ worst nightmare: a steel sky, dim as this place is blazing. A knife, a cruel smile. His words, the same every time.

“You will, won’t you? Tell me how! Tell me how to save them!”

Thirteen pulses. Thirteen deaths. One lesson.

_If turning back the hands of time was not enough to save your father's life, you must accept what came to pass was fate._

_How? How was that_ fate _?_

_Hush now. I feel your pain as if it were my own, but though Jeralt's death was at the hands of wicked ones, a fate is still a fate. Even with the power residing within us, the hardest lesson… is how much remains beyond our control._

“You can’t,” Byleth whispers, watching Lambert Blaiddyd’s head scream bloody murder. She reaches out her hand to the lost little boy again. “You can’t save them. I'm sorry.”

The hope in his eyes dies in an instant, leaving the flat, cold gaze Byleth saw every day until she walked into the Goddess Tower, intent on keeping a promise.

“Then what good are you… _goddess?_ ”

* * *

They are in the Holy Tomb, only something isn’t right. Everything is darker and the angles are wrong. She’s standing on the opposite side of the tomb from her Lions, and she’s wearing heavy armor. There is something on her face. A mask. It falls, and there’s a distortion at the edges of her vision, a person-shaped light source. The person… looks like… herself?

Wait, then who is Byleth in this dream?

A wild, manic laugh and Dimitri’s eyes are unholy upon her as his sanity crumbles before Byleth’s eyes. Blood is streaked in his hair and drips down his face. “Is this some kind of twisted joke?”

_Oh shit._

Everything happens in a flash: more bodies snapping like quill pens, the screams of the dying, blood spilling over the steps of the tomb. Byleth watches, frozen in this moment.

Dimitri’s hands close around her throat as he lifts her into the air. “Before I break your neck, there is one thing I must ask you.”

So _that’s_ why she’s been left with enough air to breathe. Dimitri’s dramatic streak strikes again.

“Dima,” Byleth says. She tries to summon her command. Isn’t that what Edelgard did to him back in the tomb to buy herself time? “It’s me, it’s Byleth. Put me down. _Please._ ”

Dimitri’s icy eyes plunge to glacial new depths. He is a black hole, absorbing everything and leaving only hate in his wake. “I don't recall giving you permission to speak. Answer my question. That is all you have left to do.”

She claws at his fingers and kicks her legs but he chuckles, enjoying her suffering. “Flame Emperor…” Dimitri begins, drawing the words out with a sickening playfulness, like a cat with a half-alive bird, eager to draw out its sick game. “...no. _Professor._ Tell me now. Why did you cause such a tragedy?”

Her eyes widen, and Byleth does the only thing she thinks might stop this nightmare: she wakes up.

* * *

Byleth opens her eyes, and Dima’s hand is wrapped around her throat.

Guess Dima wasn’t exaggerating or being dramatic. Judging by her circumstances, he may have _under_ sold the issue.

Byleth works to keep her breathing steady as she considers her options. His scent is a wild spiral of grief and rage, but Dima is only holding her throat; even in the dream, he never once applied pressure. Despite the snarl on his face, his stare is glassy and his words are slurred enough that Byleth concludes he’s still asleep. Her father once told her never to wake someone during a sleep terror.

Smoothing her palms, Byleth makes her scent as soothing as possible. “Dima,” she murmurs in soft, crisp tones. “Whatever you’re seeing, it isn’t real. You’re safe here.”

It works, in part. The hand falls away, and he whimpers, confused and scared.

She hums, and that helps as well. He stares at her unseeing as tears fall from his good eye. His fists curl into her shirt and he sobs into her throat for what feels like hours, until he collapses against her, exhausted.

Her mistake, Byleth decides as she traces the glowing mark. Dima shouldn’t have sprung this on her, but she should have respected his concerns, however poorly articulated. It’s just difficult to suss out what with Dima is his illness talking and what is a necessary boundary when she's this exhausted. Especially since there was a chaise lounge in the room that would have been too short for Dima but tolerable for Byleth, and a chair either could have used.

Still, he didn’t hurt her, even if he gave her a serious fright.

As Dima wraps himself around her, Byleth strokes his hair. She doubts he’ll be comfortable sleeping too far away from her. Separate beds in the same room might work; she’ll ask him in the morning. In the meantime, the chaise will suffice for her tomorrow night.

 _A complication,_ Byleth tells herself, _but manageable._

(She can do this. She can handle this. Dima will not be taken from her again.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: Byleth finds herself lucid dreaming within Dimitri's nightmare. He dreams she's the Flame Emperor in lieu of Edelgard and picks her up by the throat. When Byleth awakens, she discovers Dimitri has wrapped his hand around her neck in real life as well, but she is able to talk him down from his episode and he releases her.
> 
> Next up: the consequences of the consequences.
> 
> ~~Wow I might have to actually write something sweet to cheer myself up.~~
> 
> A HUGE thank you to ALL of you who've supported this fic! We've now broken 500 kudos, 11000 hits, and I've enjoyed every last one of your amazing, insightful comments on this story, the 3H universe in general, toxic masculinity, consent, and a host of other topics. I know this hasn't always been an easy ride but having readers like you has made it all worth it :)


	16. sixteen (we told you this was melodrama)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why did you ask me to claim you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _ **TRIGGER WARNINGS. PLEASE READ.**_ This chapter contains disturbing content. However, a proper warning contains a major spoiler for the final scene of this chapter.
> 
> [Here is a link to a Pastebin that contains the full warning for the content of this chapter.](https://pastebin.com/1vTr85NC) If you have _any_ triggers, **_read the warnings_** _._
> 
> For readers unable to read the final scene: there will be three scene break lines indicating when the final scene begins so you can easily skip past it. The scene itself will be summarized briefly in the endnotes.
> 
> Additional warnings for a continuation of canon mental health spirals and teacher/student boundaries being crossed with a student who is of age.
> 
> Title from [Sober II](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8j-PqSFHcc). ~~I can't believe we're finally here.~~

**ETHEREAL MOON 1180**

Dimitri was heady and sweet, the moonlight silvering his hair and illuminating his flushed skin. He was transfixed, shivering as she pulled her mouth away from his. He stared down at her in pure awe, and his eyes were a wreck, a ruin.

“That was… ” Dimitri tried to take a deep breath, but hyperventilation stole the air from his lungs, made each breath into a shallow thread that yanked him closer to her. “Please, Professor. I need… ”

The scent of him intoxicated her. Byleth kissed him harder this time, determined to suck the honey from his mouth, and he swooned in her arms like an omega from a fairytale, clutching at her as if she were his only anchor to existence. She nipped his mouth, sharp teeth spilling his blood, and he cried aloud weakly as he rubbed himself against her.

Byleth drew back and cast a quick heal spell to seal up the wound. “I’m sorry,” she said, shame-faced as she put him back on his unsteady feet. He was her student and a prince. She had no business even touching him. She had no business being up here with him in the first place.

“Don’t be sorry,” he pleaded, pulling her close as she tried to step away from him. “Please.”

When he looked at her in that shattered way, Byleth couldn’t resist. She fell back into the sweetness of his honey, her fingers fumbling with the buttons of his uniform as he tore at her dress. Eventually, the straps broke and fell to the ground, and his greedy hands wandered over the curve of her breasts, the arc of her hips. He whimpered, febrile as he dragged her closer. Byleth let him, because she wanted him closer too, wanted him, stronger than any alpha but sweetly undone by the touch of her lips. Wanted him inside her, wanted to be inside him.

“Professor… all I’ve wanted… we can… I need you.” Pathetic. Needy. Gorgeous. Then his forehead rested in the crook of her neck and she almost yelped; the heat of his skin nearly burned her.

“Dimitri, are you…” He was on suppressants, right? Surely it wasn’t possible that he…

He watched her through glassy, half-lidded eyes, pupils blown out until barely a ring of summer-blue remained. “Please,” he murmured softly. His knees buckled, and Byleth reached out to steady him. “I need you, Professor. I wanted… I wished…”

He ground himself against her, but Byleth froze at the fever rapidly consuming his body.

Fever. Heat.

_Heat._

“Dimitri, did you miss a suppressant dose?”

Silence. His eyes fluttered shut as he licked her neck.

Byleth tried not to scream. “Dima, answer me. Please.”

“Tired,” he mumbled. “I’m not an alpha, I’m not, I’m not.” He blinked hazily up her. “But it’s… too soon? Takes weeks to… clear...” Confused. Fuzzy. He tried to kiss her again. Byleth fell upon his mouth as travelers to Morfis fell upon the oases, then wrenched herself away before she got sick on his sweet poison.

_Stop it._

Dimitri was going into heat. Byleth had to _think._

Sympathetic heat, most likely driven by her scent, but how? She wasn’t an alpha…

… but she was not _not_ an alpha, wasn’t she? She could set off ruts and heats with ease if the circumstances were right. Dimitri had been able to resist with Dorothea’s safety and his promise to Byleth keeping him upright, but here, now? Alone together in the Goddess Tower, with the wish he called a joke still burning in their minds? Undone with barely a few kisses, thanks to his lapsed suppressants. What was he thinking, going off them in the first place?

 _“_ Dimitri,” Byleth said, trying to get his attention.

“Dima,” he whispered, listing into her. “Call me Dima, please. I haven’t been Dima to anyone for so long, and that’s… that’s who I am with you.”

Byleth swallowed, the stone in her chest clenching heavily. “Dima,” she said, “you’re going into heat.”

“I… am?” Byleth’s mouth physically hurt as she resisted kissing away the cute little wrinkle of his brow. Then he swallowed heavily, stood up straighter. Gained some sense of self. “I am so happy you are with me,” Dima confessed, breathless as he gripped her tighter. “You could claim me, if you wished. We’ll be together forever, and I’ll never be alone again.”

Byleth cupped his cheek in her hand, trying to pierce through the part of her brain demanding to know why she wasn’t kissing him. Every word of that last sentence horrified her.

From snatches of past conversations, Byleth had gathered that Dima had never been through a heat. Omegas in heat often said things they didn’t mean once they cooled down. Even an experienced, self-possessed omega like Dorothea had succumbed to that temptation. Byleth had to take everything Dima said with a boulder-sized grain of salt.

Because part of Byleth wanted nothing more than to accept that invitation, even if that weren’t technically possible. After all, she wasn’t an alpha.

“Dima,” Byleth said as he kissed her again, “you need to think. This is the heat talking.”

Dima laughed, high and sweet. “Let the heat talk.” He batted his eyelashes at her. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

His lips found hers again, and it took far, far too long to disentangle herself. She pulled back with short, gasping breaths, and Dima’s mouth traced her jawline, eagerly licking and sucking a trail down the curve of her neck.

Byleth could do it. She _wanted_ to do it.

She could take him. Dima was practically begging her to claim him. She wasn’t even sure that was possible, but she wasn’t sure it was impossible, either.

All it would cost him was his crown.

Only certain kinds of fucking qualified someone to be a leader, after all, and there would be no hiding his heat from the older students, or the nobles and clerics that visiting Garreg Mach for the ball. Once the world learned Dima was an omega, he’d be made a ward of the crown until an appropriate match was selected for the Prince of Faerghus. He would ascend to his throne not as a king, but as the consort of an alpha. Forced to go through the empty rituals of royalty, but denied the power to help his people.

His privy council might even select a male alpha to ascend in his place, which would leave Dima in the dangerous position of being forced to bear the royal heir in a body not built to bear children. Risky with the last Blaiddyd crest-bearer, but the magics that would shelter a womb would strengthen his crest bloodline considerably. If anyone could afford the fleet of healers necessary for him to survive and would be enticed by the possibility of a major crest-bearing heir, it would be royalty.

No. Byleth would not permit him to be lost that way.

They could leave this place, disappear. Byleth sensed the storm clouds rolling over Garreg Mach like her father sensed thunderstorms approaching in his knee. Her teeth hurt, her skin hurt, Sothis hurt, they hurt hurt hurt and she wanted him, wanted to keep him safe more than anything.

Yet even if she somehow claimed him… well, no one would let that stand. Mercenaries didn’t claim princes. She’d be sentenced to death for claiming a noble omega without the consent of his guardian, and he’d be subject to lifelong confinement. If they escaped, they’d be hunted for the rest of their lives, assuming Dima’s honor didn’t drive him back to Faerghus.

Did he even know what he was asking her?

He kissed her scent-gland, teeth scraping against it, and Byleth’s stomach dropped. She’d asked Dorothea what she wanted, and that had been enough to return her to sense.

Dorothea was a pragmatist, however. Dima was not.

And that was what this world needed: leaders who demanded a better way. His people were suffering under the weight of their loss four years ago, driven to lash out at the innocent. They needed a leader who loved his people more than he hated wickedness. Dima could be that leader.

It felt wrong. Her brain screamed otherwise. Told Byleth that Dima was hers. He was hers. _He was hers._

Except he wasn’t. He belonged to his people, and no matter how beautiful his eyes were in the moonlight and how sweetly he shivered at her touch, he was not Byleth’s to keep.

When Byleth stepped away from Dima, he cried, “Don’t leave me, please—”

—but as the divine pulse rewound time, his body cooled and his face became even, erasing all evidence of her recklessness.

“We should head back soon,” Dimitri said. “It's rude of me to keep you all to myself. Shall we, Professor?”

Mad honey flowing like a river. She could undo him in minutes, keep him all to herself.

He was never hers to keep.

“Yes, Dimitri,” Byleth said, china-doll hollow. “Let’s head back.”

* * *

**LONE TREE MOON 1185**

When Byleth wakes, everything is… fine?

Dima is not beside her. She probes out, trying to sense where he is. Training yard, not the cathedral. Her head pounds. Byleth lost count of the nights she found Dimitri there, slashing training dummies in lieu of bodies.

An improvement?

Or a calm before the storm?

There’s something else as well. Some new element Byleth can’t quite pinpoint. Before she can probe more, there’s a knock upon the door. Byleth fumbles for a robe before answering.

Flayn, red-cheeked and solemn, carries a basket. “Oh! Forgive me, Professor,” she says, eyes widening at Byleth’s state of undress. “I did not intend to wake you.”

Byleth shrugs. “It’s fine. I was already up.”

“I see.” Flayn nods and holds up her basket, which contains a lot of pastries. Byleth’s stomach rumbles. “Would you please join me for tea, Professor? I have procured an assortment of delicious treats from the village baker as well.”

It’s a novelty, being asked to tea rather than the other way around. Byleth feels warm, but it stops when reality slaps her in the face. She needs to check on Dima. If he remembers anything from last night, he’ll be upset. A sigh ripples through her at the thought of talking him off yet another metaphorical ledge.

“Professor? Is everything all right?”

There’s a _sound_ ringing in her ears, that’s what’s different. It’s low and unintelligible, almost a humming sound, but it’s there. Byleth looks at Flayn’s concerned face and her basket of treats, and a wave of something beyond exhaustion passes over her. It’s been a week—it’s been three months—of every thought being consumed by Dima. The allure of relaxing over tea with Flayn is hard to resist.

So Byleth doesn’t resist. Dima is in the training yard, and not the cathedral, which is better…ish. Sothis help her, she needs a break. “Sure. Let me get dressed.”

Most of her things are in her father’s quarters, so she pulls on yesterday’s clothes and runs her fingers through the knots in her hair. Flayn waits without complaint, and when Byleth offers her arm, her most mysterious student takes it with the ancient, ageless smile that reminds Byleth so much of Rhea.

Flayn guides her to the greenhouse, where a potting table has been reappropriated to host a tea set, silver and china and ceramic mixed to charming effect. Byleth could almost believe it an aesthetic choice rather than what Flayn scraped together after the ravages of time and looting.

The growth that has taken over all of Garreg Mach is thickest here, some of the flowering vines reaching the ceiling. Pathways have been narrowed by spilling greenery and blooms. The scent is heavier than a room full of omegas in heat, but the effect is calming, soothing.

Flayn’s face is a mixture of delight and melancholy. Waxing nostalgic, probably, though Byleth is unsure how she knows that.

“It is beautiful, is it not?” Flayn asks her, studying Byleth. “The power of your love for Dimitri.”

Ah. This is a fishing expedition. Byleth nods at Flayn. She will need stronger bait.

They chat for a while, and it’s relaxing, even with the hum in the back of Byleth’s head. Flayn serves her bergamot tea, to Byleth’s pleasant surprise. Byleth always selects the tea based on her students’ favorites; she can’t remember ever telling anyone she likes bergamot tea best.

There is honey for the tea and for the light, tender scones. This took planning and coin, given how heavily rationed butter, honey, and sugar are.

Flayn plucks a bright fuchsia flower Byleth does not recognize from a hanging vine. She twirls the stem in her hand. “I had not thought I would know this again.”

“Know what?” Byleth asks.

Flayn sets down the flower beside Byleth’s teacup. “Do you know, Professor, that when the others called you scentless, they were incorrect?”

Okay. That’s some good bait. “I developed a scent over time.”

“No.” Flayn shakes her head. “You always had a scent, Professor, but that scent is not one their minds were capable of processing. In time, they filled in the gaps with other scents, the closest references their minds could find. But I knew your scent from the moment we met, Professor, and so did my… and so did my father.”

Hook, line, sinker. “What scent, Flayn?”

Her smile is warm, open as the flowers crowding them. “The scent of our _home,_ Professor. The scent of the paradise They built, lost to us so long ago. Now all of Garreg Mach carries that scent, but it is strongest here. I wished to thank you, for no matter what happens, this is an experience I will cherish forever.”

Looking at Flayn’s open, lovely smile, Byleth should be honored that Flayn shared this with her. Happy to be the cause of it. Eager to exchange secrets.

Instead…

_I have said to you before that you are like the sea, with waters unfathomable, and multitudes in which one might drown._

The hum gets louder. Byleth’s dread ratchets up another notch. “What you said before.” Byleth grips her teacup, her other hand fidgeting beneath the potting table. “You were warning me.”

The happy light of Flayn’s face extinguishes like a snuffed candle. “I was,” she admits, biting her lip. “In retrospect, I was quite vague. I apologize for that. I did not know for certain who you _truly_ were until the bloom. But Dimitri seems better, Professor, so perhaps my warnings are for naught?” The tips of her ears turn red. “I have little experience with our mating rituals, as I have not yet begun presentation. I fear I can offer you little counsel.”

Byleth takes a bite of her scone. It turns to ash in her mouth. Flayn may not be experienced, but she’s the best counsel Byleth has right now. “Flayn? What were you afraid would happen?”

Flayn looks down at her lap. The air buzzes around them.

“They are not meant to know their creator, Professor _._ ”

_Fuck._

She drops the scone and runs.

* * *

By the time Byleth arrives at the training yard, Dima has already left. Every single training dummy has been decapitated. Also, there are now rhododendron bushes ringing the main arena, among other changes. She searches for Felix, but Shamir and Cyril are the only two present.

Shamir nods in greeting, a small smirk on her face. “Afternoon, Eisner.”

Byleth glances up at the sky, then at the shadows in the hall. _Damn_. Yeah, she’d noticed the sun was higher than usual when she went to the greenhouse with Flayn, but not that it was well into the afternoon. “How long ago did he leave?”

Cyril still has his bow at the ready. “About an hour ago? He’d been here since before dawn. He hasn’t been regularly murdering dummies like he used to so it took a while to get through ‘em all.” He gestures out at the training dummies. “Not feeling good about what’s happening here, Eisner.”

Neither is Byleth. The hum in her ears rises a notch. She studies the hall, and it takes a moment to register that there's no one else here. “You cleared the area?”

Shamir shakes her head. “People clear themselves out wherever he shows up.”

Fair enough. Still… “What about Felix?”

Shamir and Cyril exchange glances. “He’s, uh… ” Cyril sighs, deep and frustrated. “He’s in heat, Eisner.”

Well. Shit. “But he’s on suppressants.”

“Yeah, and he also spent five days hanging around the tower.” Shamir buffs her nails. “Things got weird after you turned this place into a jungle. After it ended? He went down first.”

 _What._ “First?”

Another sigh from Cyril. “Sylvain dragged Felix into a heat chamber. Mercedes and Annette holed up in the infirmary. Ingrid and Ashe are locked in chambers too, not sure if they’re together, very sure I don’t care either way. No idea where Marianne hid herself, and, nope, not gonna go looking.”

Shamir’s face tightens. “Yeah, that was… wild.”

“Wild?” Byleth asks.

“It was very… grrrr.” Cyril makes his hands into claws and growls at Byleth for effect. “She might have horns now, I didn’t stick around to check after she chased me.”

Shamir glares at Cyril. “Don’t be such an omega.” Turning to Byleth, she says, “Marianne gave chase for approximately fifteen seconds before she regained awareness and removed herself from the situation. I'll confirm the presence of horns, along with changes to her hands, teeth, and possibly eyes.”

 _Shit._ Byleth knew Marianne had rough ruts and took an unusually high dose of silphium to suppress her high rut drive, but she’d always been cagey about the details. The physical transformation Shamir and Cyril were describing was unheard of for alphas or omegas. An effect of her crest, perhaps? Byleth would have to talk to her after her rut ended. “So you don’t consider her dangerous?”

“Affirmative,” Shamir replies. “I’ve seen alphas with no rut and no fangs with less self-restraint.” She mutters under her breath, “Girl probably just needs to get laid.”

“Wait, is that really what happens if alphas and omegas don’t screw?” Cyril asks Shamir, wide-eyed.

Shamir shrugs. “Dunno. Could be. Working here, I’ve seen some shit.”

Okay. So despite Marianne’s physical transformation, she isn’t a threat, and the rest of Byleth’s Lions are secure. If their behavior yesterday was any indication, they were in the earliest stages of sympathetic presentation when she and Dimitri left the tower. At least sympathetic heats were much shorter than cyclical ones. Felix, Mercedes, and Ashe will likely emerge from their respective chambers by tonight.

The ruts are a bigger problem. If the alphas don’t knot while rutting, their rut drives will be higher after they come down, making them more susceptible to rutting again in the near future. If they _do_ knot…

…well, the next war council is going to be interesting.

Further speculation is pointless. There is nothing Byleth can do until her Lions’ presentations run their course. Confronting rutting alphas and heatsick omegas in their nests never ends well; the one time Byleth had to do it for a job, she almost got flattened by the berserk alpha, while the omega played the damsel long enough to stab Byleth’s left tit. The omega still sends weird letters with nonsensical hexes to Byleth; she got a fresh one just last month.

It’s not an experience Byleth wants to repeat with her Lions.

(Then again, they wouldn't be going through this at all if she hadn't gone into the Goddess Tower. Why did she think this would be different from Dorothea? Did she think that? Or did she just not care?)

Still. She’s an idiot not to have seen this coming after what happened last time. “What about the rest of the knights and staff? The refugees?”

“Handled,” Cyril replies. “Seteth cleared the grounds to non-essential personnel and turned the mausoleum into emergency presentation rooms and set up a watch. Had folks quarantined before stuff got real weird.”

“Dr. von Essar is secure in his office,” Shamir adds. “We don’t know how far the…” Shamir gestures to the flowering plants that had overtaken the training area’s spectator divider. Her nose wrinkles in disgust.

“The sex pollen,” Cyril chimes in with a shit-eating grin.

“ _No_ ,” Shamir snaps, wagging a finger at Cyril before facing Byleth again. “No reports from the knights returning from the bandit incursions in the foothills, but we secured everyone we could from the monastery and the surrounding villages. Minor incidents, but no reported assaults.”

“Seteth had everything ready to go. Guess he learned from last time,” Cyril remarks, and Byleth’s stomach drops.

How did none of this occur to her? Seteth ran himself ragged cleaning up the mess her heat-sit with Dorothea created, yet the risk of setting off another incident was _nowhere_ in her calculations. Maybe because the Goddess Tower was more isolated than a dorm room? Or the fact that she definitely couldn’t have anticipated turning Garreg Mach into… whatever this is?

No. She’s making excuses. It didn’t occur to her because Byleth was fixated on finally claiming Dima, damn the consequences. When did she become so thoughtless, so selfish? It used to be easy to see the greater good, the path that got the most people out unscathed. Now she’s leaving messes everywhere for other people to clean up.

Her ears hum, and Byleth swallows. “Shamir, Cyril… I can’t thank you two enough. Cyril, Sylvain told me you came up with the excuse for my disappearance?”

“Yeah, Lady Rhea used to disappear for a few days at a time. She always said she was meditating in the holy tomb. We told folks you did the same. You’re the goddess’s chosen, so all the blooming flowers look like her blessing. Like you’re a real goddess or something.” Cyril gags. “Better no one knows the _real_ reason.”

He definitely cleaned the Goddess Tower yesterday. “I’m grateful for all your help.”

“You better find Lady Rhea,” Cyril says, glaring at Byleth, “and I want a raise. No, I want my wages _doubled_. That was some bullshit up there, Eisner.”

“You’re no longer technically emp—”

Cyril nocks an arrow.

“Sure, I’ll talk to Seteth.”

Cyril un-nocks the arrow, and Shamir fist-bumps him.

So. Her Lions are safe…ish, and Seteth has held down the fort despite everything her rut threw at him. It’s sobering, realizing how much could have gone wrong while she was chasing after Dimitri.

The humming noise again. It almost sounds like a beehive. There’s the accompanying spike of dread. Byleth takes a deep breath. “So… did you see which way Dimitri went?”

Shamir raises an eyebrow. “Where do you think he is, Eisner?”

It’s a pointless question. Byleth knew where Dima was before she asked. Before Cyril greeted her, even. It’s just…

This is it, isn’t it? Dima's heat is over, and his post-heat haze has receded. The omega she claimed has retreated back into… Byleth doesn't know. She has no idea who she's going to meet in the cathedral and that scares her shitless.

But it's time.

It’s time to meet her omega on the other side.

* * *

She finds Dimitri sitting in one of the few pews still attached to the floor, clad in full armor with his lance next to him. The humming in the back of her head increases as she approaches.

When Byleth steps in front of Dimitri, he doesn’t acknowledge her. Byleth doesn’t know why she’s surprised. She’s walked into this exact scenario too many times: Dimitri’s gaze fixed on a point no one else sees, his mouth shaping words no one else understands. His hands grip the seat’s edge, well-worn gauges where his hands slot so perfectly, they no longer leave splinters in his skin. His scent is so wretched she’s forced to breathe through her mouth. He’s right here and a thousand miles away.

Somehow it’s worse than his rage or his cold indifference.

Byleth’s attempts to pull Dimitri out of this state rarely worked in the past, but their bond might give her more leverage. Taking deep breaths, Byleth focuses on their connection, searching for any path she can walk to guide him back. The humming worsens, buzzing harshly in her ears. Like kicking a beehive. Her head throbs, a small ache slowly sharpening until it’s like an axe splitting her skull. Gasping, Byleth pulls back. Dimitri’s gaze flicks to her, then returns to whatever delusion has captured him.

So there _are_ limits to her reach. Rubbing her head, Byleth isn’t sure she should be glad they exist or terrified of where they’re set. Both, probably. Both seem right.

Nothing else does. There’s an ache in Byleth’s chest almost as strong as the one in her head. _Maybe this is what having a heart feels like,_ but that doesn’t seem right either.

“Dima,” Byleth murmurs, forcing herself as steady and even as possible, “can you talk to me?”

No response. Why does that hurt? It’s no different than before. Why did she expect anything would be different?

“Dima,” she repeats, and her voice wavers. “Please. Talk to me. Can you tell me what you’re seeing?”

Byleth had steeled herself for no response again, but this time when Dimitri’s gaze falls in her direction, it stays. His mouth snaps shut, lips trembling as the pew cracks beneath him. “My beloved,” he murmurs, adoration and devastation stark in his eye, painful to behold. Even as Dimitri faces Byleth, he’s not quite seeing _her,_ as if he’s looking at an _idea_ of her overlaid by his mind. His voice carries from far away, a pleasant monotone, absent of emotion. “My alpha. I will not insult you by asking for your forgiveness. I would give you your vengeance this very second, but my family… they suffer, beloved. I hear their screams, and only _that woman’s_ head will release them from their torment in the Eternal Flame. I am sorry, but I must have her head before you can be avenged.”

He slumps back against the pew. “I doubt I will be allowed to rest by your side, though I long for nothing more. I do not deserve that. But you will know peace, beloved, once they are appeased. I will avenge you. I swear it.”

_Oh fuck._

“Dima,” and for once, Byleth is far too rattled to bother with faking steadiness, “do you think you killed me?”

“Didn’t I?” he asks in those detached, neutral tones she hates. Dread skitters down her spine as the rotten scents intensify. “I had my hands around your throat. There are bruises on your neck and I could not find a heartbeat. What else am I to conclude but that I am precisely the monster I told you I am?”

Okay. Byleth takes a deep breath. Even breathing through her mouth, she can’t keep herself from gagging on his scent. Pure rotted flesh, all the way down. Not a drop of honey left.

This isn’t right. Dimitri knows better, if he’d only stop to _think._ “Well, you’re not, because you didn’t kill me. You let me go. My bruises aren’t consistent with strangulation,” she adds, not bothering to remind him they’re _both_ covered in fingerprint-shaped bruises from several days of hard fucking, “and you know I don’t have a heartbeat. We talked about this after I—after the Sealed Forest, when you carried me back to the monastery. I’m heartless, remember?”

Byleth remembers. She remembers how angry Dimitri was when she told him she was heartless. She remembers the rage in his eyes as he made her swear never to call herself heartless again, that nothing was further from the truth, that she had the biggest heart of anyone he’d ever known. She remembers gripping Dimitri’s hands as if they were the last purchase she had in this world. In that moment, Byleth believed him.

She’s kept that promise, at least with her words. Until now.

It works. Dimitri’s gaze clears, sharpens on her as his mouth thins. He knows she’s baiting him, but he snaps it up anyway. Why he hates her being frank about her heartlessness is beyond Byleth, but it’s nice to see that hasn’t changed.

He closes his eyes and his lips part. The mark at his throat flares softly, like a flame fed with fresh kindling. There’s a sensation Byleth can’t place in the back of her skull, and the humming of the beehive in her ears changes into something… almost recognizable. Almost human.

It’s _annoying_ , and Byleth imagines herself swatting at the sound like she would at a mosquito. The mental trick works and the sound relents to a low drone. Dimitri blinks up at her, startled. That, more than anything, seems to convince him she’s still alive.

“I’m alive,” she says anyway, because Dimitri is too damn eager to bury her again and Byleth has no interest in staying dead.

“So you are,” he says in that dull, distant voice. At least he’s looking at her instead of whatever misery his mind conjured up today. It’s a start.

“Good.” Byleth taps her foot. “Now what?”

Dimitri’s return to awareness, however, comes with another change. She feels his withdrawal as much as she sees it: his eyes grow cold and his face hardens and his lips twist into that cruel sneer she itches to smack away. His scent floods with blood and smoke, the rot a background note. “Well, Professor, surely you see now the value in keeping your distance from me, despite our… unfortunate entanglement. Leave me. _Now_.”

The words are growled, not spoken, and what a charming way to describe their bond. As if Byleth were a scullery maid pregnant with her lord’s child, an _inconvenience_ to be sent away, and not the woman who claimed his body and soul. (Actually, except for the lack of pregnancy, that comparison is dead on. It’s a miracle neither of them had been addled enough to talk of _breeding_.)

“You didn’t hurt me, Dima,” Byleth reminds him in her gentlest voice. “Even when you aren’t yourself, you’ve never hurt me.”

Dimitri’s chuckle is dry, brittle. “No. I am never more myself than when I hurt you.” Before Byleth can answer, he adds, “Unless there are rats sniffing at our gates, go away. I’ve no use for you any longer.”

He grips his lance, a slow, cruel smile blooming on his face as he makes for the cathedral’s exit. There’s no point arguing with him when he’s like this. Everything gets warped and twisted back on whoever tries, Dimitri quick to wound anyone who tries to untangle the knotted mess of his delusions.

_So that’s it. Sloppy seconds for the dead._

“Why did you do it?”

Dimitri pauses. It’s brief, but it’s enough for Byleth to ask again. “Why did you ask me to claim you?”

Now he stops. There’s the faintest whiff of honey, smothered beneath the smoke. Byleth clings to it. “I told you I would use you until the flesh fell from your bones, did I not?” he asks, sounding faintly amused. A soft, vicious chuckle punctuates the words. “With your claim at my throat, no other alpha can compel me to obey them, and you were all too willing to believe you were claiming the pathetic boy you knew, not the monster I am.”

Byleth flashes back to the Holy Tomb, to Edelgard’s voice that day, the sheer _power_ radiating off her as she ordered the Blue Lions to stand down. The blazing hatred in Dimitri’s eyes as he dropped to his knees. The confusion and terror as each of her Lions laid down their weapons, compelled by the overwhelming aura of command that emanated from Edelgard. Even Dedue obeyed. Even the alphas obeyed. Even _Rhea_ faltered.

But Byleth hadn’t. Edelgard’s command hadn’t even slowed Byleth down. (Thirty soldiers who tried to dogpile her handled that.) Edelgard and her little trick is a problem Byleth has yet to solve, true, but Byleth isn’t worried. She’s barely scratched the surface of the Crest of Flames’ arsenal.

So it _sounds_ perfect. It sounds perfectly cruel, a slap in the face to drive her away and leave him to rot with his ghosts. The bit about using her and falling flesh sounds familiar, probably a callback to some insult he spat after she’d tuned out his vitriol.

That’s her first indicator that Dimitri is full of shit.

Because claims are easily given, but to take root, both offer and acceptance must be truly desired. Alphas and omegas have plenty of power to manufacture that desire in one another, but sometimes, claims simply don’t take. More than one political alliance among nobles has dissolved after a claim never took among spouses or on a consort. She doesn’t believe for a second that Dimitri could manufacture that desire within himself solely to obtain his vengeance.

True, Dimitri is not the boy five years gone with moonlight-silvered hair who begged Byleth to steal him from destiny. But _this_ Dimitri works tirelessly to drive her and her Lions away. For him to turn around and bind her to him by claiming undoes all his hard work being an even bigger asshole than Felix on a rage bender these past months.

Besides, there was no faking his desperation, the _longing_ as he’d pleaded for her to claim him. Nor was his radiant joy when her claim took fake. Not even Dorothea was that good an actor.

Byleth’s stomach roils and churns and again she gags on the rot of Dimitri’s stench. It doesn’t slow her down. “Try again,” Byleth suggests, “but the truth, this time.”

Dimitri whirls back to look at her, his mouth curled in distaste. “Must you persist with this drivel? I have given you reason enough. Who better to take as my alpha, to strike down monsters… than a _goddess_? The very goddess _that woman_ wishes to destroy, no less!”

Well, that’s out in the open. It’s a discussion for another day… month… year, however. Byleth still hasn’t heard anything but after-the-fact excuses from Dimitri. That second attempt was even worse. Dimitri had no idea she was more than “blessed” by the goddess until after she claimed him.

“Now cease your pathetic nipping at my heels, _alpha,_ ” Dimitri snarls. His voice is pure, cold derision as he moves to leave.

“ _Stop._ ”

Dimitri stops. He’s visibly shaken as he turns back to face Byleth. The humming becomes a furious buzzing again, and the blood and smoke are thick in his scent as his body obeys Byleth without his mind’s consent.

She’s frightened him.

_Good._

“Your ‘plan’ has a flaw,” Byleth tells him. “You’re safe from Edelgard’s commands, but not mine.”

“Do not say that witch’s name,” Dimitri growls.

“You don’t give me orders,” Byleth snaps back. Through the bond, she gives him a glimpse of the fathomless depths of the Crest of Flames. Dimitri’s eyes widen. He whimpers, fear rising in his scent as he grasps just how much autonomy he’s traded away to secure his safety from Edelgard.

“I can stop you,” Byleth reminds him coldly, her eyes fixed on the jade gleam at his throat. “If I ordered you not to touch a hair on her head, you’d obey, wouldn’t you? You’ve always been—” _a good boy,_ but even in her fury, Byleth isn’t cruel enough to finish that sentence, to taint those beautiful memories. “You’ve _always_ followed my orders. So stop lying and tell me _why_.”

There’s a heartbreak of a moment when Dimitri’s eye flashes in sheer relief, as if this were a command he would not only obey, but would be _grateful_ to carry out. Before Byleth can push that angle, however, it vanishes, and what’s left is pure, black _rage_.

“So now you seek to _protect_ that monster?” Dimitri’s voice rumbles like a volcano on the verge of eruption, the smoke scent so heavy it stings Byleth’s eyes. His lance shaft cracks in his grip. “Do you intend to join her side, Professor? Or did you join her long before our little reunion? Perhaps you have been an Imperial spy all this time, just as I suspected!”

Byleth rolls her eyes. “Are you _listening_ to yourself?” Byleth asks in total disbelief. “Not only am I your alpha, I’ve been planning this war around _your_ obsession with killing Edelgard! Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Blood and smoke fill the room. “Do not think your claim protects you, Professor!” he roars at her, his lance an inch from her dead heart. “Should you stand in my way, when I hang _that woman’s_ head from the gates of Enbarr, it will be _your_ head dangling next to it!”

They both freeze at his words. Dimitri’s face collapses, the horror on his face echoing through Byleth. He steps back, raising a shaking hand to his face as his lance clatters to the ground. “No one will stop me from giving the dead their vengeance,” he says, trembling as he speaks. “Not even my alpha.”

Which brings them full circle.

“I don’t intend to stop you,” Byleth says, proud of how calm she sounds. “I never did. I just want the truth. Why ask me to claim you, if you were just going to set me aside?”

No power, no compulsion infused her words. Dima will give her the truth, but Byleth will not take it from him.

She waits and waits. He staggers back to the pew, lowering himself to the floor, gripping his head in his hands.

Byleth waits.

And then: “I never thought you'd say yes.”

The words are barely a whisper, yet they echo through the empty cathedral louder than any war. They rip through her gut cleaner and quicker than the Sword of the Creator.

Everything _stops_.

The Crest of Flames flashes and Byleth pants as color, scent, sound all leech from the world. Dima’s anguish is a portrait vivid as any Ignatz used to draw, frozen in a moment Byleth’s pain stole from time. She takes in a wet, heavy breath as she kneels down in front of him.

* * *

_Byleth waved her hand as if she could shove away the death-rot-smoke-blood-burning-death-please stench as she climbed the Goddess Tower. Five years gone and everything she loved was ashes and ruin. The stench grew stronger with each step._

_The stench’s source huddled in a dark corner, shaking as he clutched his lance. He growled and snapped like a wounded animal as she approached. A stray sunbeam limned his face and figure, filthy and bedraggled, gaunt cheeks and sharp nose peeking out beneath blood-stained hair._

_It couldn’t be._

_And yet._

_That horrible stench overwhelmed her again, and Byleth had to force herself not to run to the balcony and retch._

_When she stepped into the light, all the fight drained out of him. His head thumped against the wall. With a soft sigh, he murmured, “I knew someday you’d no longer be content haunting my dreams.”_

Dima.

_Byleth’s body couldn’t decide if it wanted to throw up or cry. She chose neither, kneeling before him and extending her hand with slow, practiced motions to keep from startling him. Slow motions also hid her tremor._

_Dimitri laughed, bitter and broken, as he edged away from her. “How cruel you’ve become. What a fool I am. But I will kill_ that woman, _I swear it. Just… do not look at me that way. Not you. Please.”_

* * *

So _that’s_ how Dima found the courage to ask: his unshakeable belief in his unworthiness.

Dima never wanted her mark or her love. He'd wanted the pain of having been denied yet again, because _nothing_ is Dima’s best-case scenario, and Dima doesn’t know how to live in a world where he gets _anything,_ much less what he wants.

Her cheeks are wet. Byleth wipes them and traces Dima’s lips with damp fingers before trailing down to the mark. The jade sparkles at his throat, its magic shining through his armor even in her place beyond time. Something hot and ugly curdles in her stomach, and she snatches her hand away as if burned.

She steps back and snaps her fingers. The world resumes turning.

Dima’s eyes widen as he registers the words that just came out of him. As he did before, he puts his hands to his mouth as if to keep them in, but they have long escaped. Their poison barbs hook into her skin.

“I know you love me,” Byleth begins quietly, voice extinguished of all emotion, “but I think you’d love me more if I were still dead.”

Dima’s jaw drops, his eyes flashing with horror before the shame replaces it. The impact reverberates through Byleth’s bones. “That’s not… how can you… why would you say such a wretched thing?”

“Easy.” Byleth does not blink; she keeps herself blank, china-doll hollow. Her mind is quiet for the first time since she woke up this morning. “You might not want me dead, but you don’t want me alive, either. The living fuck up, they abandon you when you need them. The ghosts are safe. Predictable.”

Dima is finally looking at her, _really_ looking, in mingled terror and awe, but Byleth does not stop. “I get it now. You’ll choose Edelgard’s head over your people, your friends, over _me,_ every time.”

“Do not say that woman’s name!” he cries, doubling over like she’d kicked him in the gut.

Byleth is still, immovable as the ancient statues carved into the face of Garreg Mach mountain. “Why not? Hers is the altar at which you worship.”

_Not mine._

A strange time to realize how jealous a god she truly is. Byleth wants Dima at _her_ altar and hers alone. Her altar is an altar for the living. Not Edelgard’s altar, her bloody path through Fódlan.

Byleth turns away from his sob of pain. Her body spasms with his misery and hers; she can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. “I need some time to think.”

As Byleth passes through the cathedral entrance, she hears, “ _Alpha_. Don’t leave me, _please_.” Small, broken. Pure, sweet honey breaking through the rot.

She pauses but dares not turn back. “I’m not the one who left, Dima.”

Byleth’s tears roll hot and thick down her cheeks in time with Dima’s howls from the cathedral.

* * *

* * *

* * *

When she wakes, her chest is thump-thump-thump- _thump_ - _thump_ -THUMP- _THUMP_ —

Byleth cracks an eye open and scrubs her face. Everything is crusty and matted. She looks around her father’s old quarters. Five years gone and they're strewn with her things, unrecognizable as his any longer, but she spent so many nights crying herself to sleep in these rooms, so what's one more?

Lurching to a sitting position, she tries to make sense of the sensation in her chest. It’s nothing she’s experienced before, an incessant tattoo spiraling her panic upward. What is it? Where did it come from? Why now?

Scrubbing her face, Byleth puts her hand to her chest, feeling for the THUMP- _THUMP._ It reminds her of her father’s description of a heartbeat, of laying on Dima’s chest listening to the steady thump of his heart.

Still no movement from her dead heart. Frowning, Byleth checks her pulse. Steady at 60 beats per minute, exactly like every other time she’s checked it. This thumping in her chest is a manic frenzy, shallow and unrelenting—

—slowing quickly, too quickly…

What is it? if this isn’t her heart beating, then what heart—whose heart—

— _no. NO._

Byleth leaps off the chaise, sprinting down the stairs and towards the cathedral.

It’s not too late, it’s not too late, it’s not too late—

—not too late not too late not too late—

He lays over the altar steps—sightless eye staring up at the heavens he never believed he’d see—red red crimson red soaking the white fur red red crimson red on the tile below—at the head of the blood river gleam are the fading wisps of her claim mark, the force of his grief barreling into her chest.

— _too late._

Byleth _**screams**_.

The world shatters and remakes itself.

She’s running, she’s running, she’s running—

—not too late not too late _not too late_ —

“Father, please!” He’s hunched over the steps, rocking himself back and forth as he shouts between broken sobs. “Why must you ask this of me? I can still bring you _that woman’s_ head, I swear it! Stepmother, of course I still love you. I know I’m pathetic, I am sorry, but please, _anything but that._ Glenn, I know I’m nothing, nothing but a worthless knot-slut, but not her, not her, _not her. Anyone but her!_ ”

Does Dima mean—

“You’re right, Dedue,” he whimpers, “I am selfish, weak. But I can fix it. Glenn, I can fix it! There are other ways. I can—I will show you. _Nothing_ will stop me from bringing you peace. Not even _her_.”

“Dima,” she yells, calling up every bit of power she can. “Dima, please! _Stop!_ ”

He doesn’t even hear her. She is paralyzed behind wall-thick glass as he takes Edelgard’s dagger to his neck and hacks away at her mark her beautiful mark her mark green is red green red red crimson red—

— _too late._

Byleth _**screams**_.

—again, now, and her body trembles with the effort of making and remaking the world with so little energy.

“I’m sorry!” He chokes on incoherent apologies. “I don’t know why—I’m _not_ hers, I’m yours, I still belong to you, Father, Stepmother, Glenn, Dedue—I’m sorry—”

The knife again—

—Byleth _**screams**_ —

—not too late not too late _not too late_ —

She rushes to his side as he collapses, the heal glyph forming at her fingertips—

— _ **not** too late._

He squeezes his eye shut as her magic floods the hole he’s carved out of his neck. “I—”

“Don’t try to talk,” Byleth murmurs, a sob catching in her throat.

Dima shakes his head, and as the bleeding stops, he manages more. “I shouldn’t… have asked,” he croaks, hoarse and broken. “Corpses… belong to the dead.”

He tries to lift his hand to her cheek, but it falls away, and his eye slides shut.

 _Not too late,_ she tells herself, but Byleth does not stop screaming until long after the Blue Lions find them in the cathedral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~you wanted something that we offered~~
> 
> **Summary:** Byleth awakens and senses Dimitri’s heartbeat slowing through the bond. She runs to the cathedral and finds Dimitri dead on the altar steps. After using a divine pulse, she arrives at the cathedral and sees Dimitri, after arguing with his delusions, take a dagger to his throat and cut away Byleth’s mark, nicking an artery. He dies again, so Byleth divine pulses a third time. This time she uses magic to keep Dimitri alive until the Blue Lions, hearing her screams for help, come to their aid. 
> 
> **Additional Notes:** Several chapters back, I told all of you that when I started this story, I made two promises to myself. The second I broke, but the first, “the magic cock is NOT a magic _healing_ cock,” I’ve stuck to like glue. In this universe, every choice has consequences, there are _no_ easy fixes, and progress is not linear. It was apparent from the earliest planning stages of the story that there was no happy ending at this point in the storyline. Still, even I struggled like hell when I realized _this_ was the inevitable result of everything I’d built. (Guys, this was supposed to be _feral pegging porn_. Something went _horribly_ wrong.) It was the right decision, but it was not an easy one. 
> 
> I’m saving the full “why the hell I did this” spiel for after the final chapter. The final chapter will lay the foundation for ~~how the fuck I'm going to fix this~~ what comes next. In the meantime, I’m happy to answer any and all questions (and provide reassurance/emotional support/mild to moderate punching bag services in the comments).
> 
> A special thank you to [LunaFox90](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunafox90/pseuds/Lunafox90) for cold reading this chapter so I could adjust warnings properly.
> 
> I appreciate the fuck out of _all_ the readers who have offered their kudos, comments, and general love and support. Especially those of you who’ve stuck it through all the way to here. I know this hasn’t been an easy ride and I just am so grateful y’all were willing to come on it with me.


	17. final

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone must accept what happened and move forward, lest they all remain trapped by regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger warnings.** Discussion of the prior chapter’s events. Canon severe mental health issues and (bad) treatment options. Suicidal ideation. Discussion of and some actual mental/emotional manipulation, albeit under dire circumstances.
> 
> Sorry to leaving you hanging so long. My computer’s back in the shop and the warranty’s expired. So I broke down and did the final rewrite and posted via mobile. (You’re welcome.) Then I managed to post a version without my final final edits, argh. Let me know if I left anything hanging while editing so I can it fix it, please.
> 
> Final chapter name is what it is because reasons, but “now I can’t stand to be alone” from [Perfect Places](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J0DjcsK_-HY) is the name in my heart.
> 
> This is it, folks. It’s been a wild ride, but everything ends, right?

Dima almost looks peaceful.

When Dima sleeps, he curls around himself or Byleth, waiting for the world to strike. Here in Manuela’s chambers, drugged with poppy milk and Byleth’s whispered words made magic, his face is near-slack and his limbs rest heavy on the mattress. Without the tension of nightmares playing across his face, Byleth can almost see the boy she never kissed atop the Goddess Tower five years ago.

An odd observation, but observations are all she seems to be able to muster at the moment. Everything is distant. As if seen through windows. Walls of glass she once thought shattered rebuilt, thicker than ever.

Byleth holds Dima’s hand. It feels wrong to touch him _(after what she’s done to him)_ but even in this state, his hand reaches for hers. He always liked her hands.

His scarred eye socket is exposed. That will upset him when he wakes. Dima’s eyepatch sits on a tray next to the bed. Byleth attempts to put it over his head, but even slight movements jostle the bandages at his throat.

No. Byleth will not undo hours of Manuela’s delicate work. Manuela opened Byleth’s veins to keep Dima alive. She will not risk damaging him again.

(A quirk of claiming, Byleth learns, is that blood transfusions between mates are always successful. It is cold comfort as she stares at the bright, red-streaked mark still shining above the bandages, mocking her love.)

Hanneman is the first to visit after Manuela stabilizes Dima. He runs pointless tests, asks tedious questions Byleth answers in a detached monotone. Byleth pays him little attention until he has something relevant to offer.

“…claim bond has suffered some sort of… damage,” Hanneman informs her. A grim sort of pity dims his gaze. “…something I have never witnessed…”

Byleth tunes out. Hanneman’s in lecture mode. Unhelpful.

“…body seems now to be attacking his crest and scent gland as if they are suffering from infection… most unusual… believe it is psychosomatic… his mental state… ”

Boring. Useless. Byleth never takes her eyes from the taunting red-streaked mark. “How do I fix it?”

He aims more useless noises at her. Mentions Linhardt again. Eventually, he says, “I’m sorry, Byleth,” as if she hasn’t heard those words enough to last a lifetime.

Hanneman leaves. Mercedes comes, still pale from her recently-ended heat, but steady-handed, even. She drones soothing noises. Pointless. Byleth hands Mercedes the eyepatch, and she puts it back on Dima without disturbing his wound. Less pointless.

When Manuela comes, scalpel-sharp and grim-mouthed, Byleth straightens.

“When I first came back to Garreg Mach, I asked you,” Manuela begins with eyes almost as hollow as Byleth’s, “if you thought he would hurt himself. You told me he wouldn’t.”

Byleth swallows. “That’s not what I said.”

What Byleth said was that Dima wouldn’t actively attempt to hurt himself, and she stands by that. Dima’s death wish never extended far enough to turn the blade on himself, if only because he believed he didn’t deserve any reprieve from suffering. Now Dima has his iron-clad justification, at least as his mind sees those things.

Byleth is the one who gave it to him.

Manuela’s face is cold and calm. Her warm bedside manner is a distant memory. “Well, circumstances have changed. Do you disagree?”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Byleth shakes her head.

Manuela’s exhale is part relief, part rising stress as she continues. “We can make him comfortable in one of the heat chambers until long-term arrangements can be made. The restraints are designed to withstand crest-bearing alphas and omegas—“

“No.” Locking him away would be traumatic enough without recreating Fhirdiad. “No restraints.”

Manuela raises an eyebrow. “It would be for his safety, Byleth. We may not have a choice.”

Byleth shakes her head. “He’ll hurt anyone who tries.”

(If Dima doesn’t, then Byleth will.)

A pause. A soft sigh. “This is why I told you to take him to Morfis. Their healers have more advanced knowledge of minds than we do.”

Leaving for Morfis in the middle of a war is not a solution and Manuela knows it. “Don’t waste my time.”

Manuela runs her hand through her hair. Frustrated. Irritated. Byleth sympathizes in some distant corner of her mind. “Fine. I have a technique for inducing a comatose state with magic. it’s risky, but less risky than letting him develop a dependence on poppy milk or using sleeping magic, given his terrors.”

Byleth’s stomach twists around itself.

“I’ll reach out to the healers we discussed before. It would be best if Duke Fraldarius acted as a guarantor, but since the claim took, you technically have the right to make medical decisions on his behalf.”

Byleth snorts. The claim that almost killed him, giving her the power to decide his future. “You understand you’re asking me to destroy the rebellion.”

Once they lock Dima up, even when he recovers, the nobility would never ride under the banner of a ‘mad king,’ as if treating sickness were the true insanity. It would end the Blaiddyd monarchy for at least a generation, crushing Byleth’s resistance with the Knights of Seiros in turn.

“His death would do that too, Byleth,” Manuela reminds her. Gentler now. “I hate this war as much as the next person, but don’t make the mistake his advisors and retainers made. He’s a man, not a crown.”

_I do not wish for you to see me as a future king, but as your student._

_You’re both._

“He’s both.” Byleth looks away from Manuela. “He’s both, Manuela. He’s lost sight of that, but I can’t.”

Losing sight of that is why he’s lying in this bed.

Dima almost looks peaceful. Maybe that will have to be enough. Like every bit of peace he’s ever had, stolen from his fucking ghosts.

“Give me until morning?” she asks Manuela. Byleth needs a moment to breathe.

“Of course.” Manuela puts her hand on Byleth’s shoulder. “Byleth, honey… I am so sorry.”

Byleth flinches away. Doesn’t respond.

Pointless. Nothing worth saying.

* * *

Byleth waits for her breath to finally catch, her thoughts to untwist and unknot themselves enough to figure out how to fix this. She’s the tactician, she’s heartless, she’s the Ashen Demon. She will find a way.

Someone sits beside her. Familiar, but not quite yet comfortable.

“How are you doing?”

Seteth.

A hairline crack in the glass. He’s measured, steady, and that makes Byleth more honest. “I don’t know.”

They sit, silent, and Byleth does not watch the way her broken mark still shines, luminous in the moonlight. She focuses on the red, angry streaks spreading like an infection. “Are you here to deliver your retribution?”

A long pause. “Even if Dimitri were still a student under my care, nothing I could say or do would be worse than what has transpired.”

“A lecture, then.” Something to focus on besides the ache _._ She wants to fight. Hunt. She can smell Gilbert, soil and flame and steel, stalking the corridors below after Annette drove him away with blood on the wind. Byleth wants most to _hurt_ the one who hurt her sweet mate, but the enemy is inside Dima’s mind.

But Gilbert would suffice. He is complicit.

They are all complicit.

Complicit in her crime.

Seteth, clever and careful, hums. Amused. “Would you like a lecture?”

“I want to fight,” Byleth confesses, dully dreaming of the slide of her sword through dead bodies, “but I’d take a lecture. I look around rooms for an adult to tell me what to do.”

Seteth sighs and pats her shoulder. “I have some unfortunate news for you,” and he’s grave as a battlefield with all the twisted mirth of gallows humor. “That feeling never goes away.”

Byleth laughs, a brittle thing spat from her lungs. Another crack. “Great.”

“Hard to hear, I know.” Seteth’s smile is wry, honest, but his eyes are a thousand miles away. “No, I have no plan to lecture you, but if it would help, I could scrape one together.”

That’s… something. Byleth would smile if she could move without her entire being snapping like a quill pen in Dima’s hands. “I shouldn’t have done it.”

Seteth hums, skeptical. Unpredictable. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

Byleth motions to Dima’s still, almost-peaceful almost-corpse. “How can you say that when he’s laying there, like—”

“There is no way to know what would have happened had you _not_ gone in the tower,” Seteth counters before Byleth can even finish protesting.

Untrue. She could push herself. Maybe she couldn’t save her dad, but she’s far more than she was then. Galaxies are made and unmade within her, why not unmake five days? That the universe refuses to bend to her will is a mark of her own greed.

“Flayn tried to warn me.” There. Let him argue that.

“Of course she did,” Seteth says with that vague amusement again. “I told her not to get involved, so naturally she must do the opposite. Perhaps I should have told her to worm her way very intimately into your business, to put her off the idea altogether?”

Byleth starts, turns. Another crack, but Seteth’s rueful half-smile is not for her. “You told Flayn not to get involved?”

He nods. “Flayn is young. She knows, but she does not _know_.” He pats Dima’s knee. “She will begin presentation any time now, much in the way you did. I live in terror of that day.”

Byleth almost smiles, but the jade and red catch her eye. Mirth drains out like blood on the cathedral steps. “But wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t gone up there.”

Seteth leans closer. His expression softens. “You do not know if a different outcome would have been a better one. Your mark was upon him, after all.”

She cocks her head. “My… mark? You mean the claim?”

Seteth shakes his head. “No. Not the mating bond, but a mark as promise. An old, obscure ritual, lost in the present day. One breaks the skin of a potential mate and seals the wound with magic. It offers some minor protection against rivals for the potential mate’s hand and any who would do them harm. Difficult to spot unless you know what to look for.”

Byleth remembers moonlight, a kiss never kissed, a confession never heard. Her stomach sinks.

Because the kiss _did_ happen. Byleth kissed Dima and it was the beginning of the end. Not even changing the flow of time could erase her original sin.

Her eye traces his too-thin form, lingers over scars hidden by the blankets. “I don’t think it worked very well.”

Seteth shrugs. “He lived, did he not? Rather a miracle, considering all he has been through. And your mark stayed upon him even after you were presumed dead, through five years of war and exile. Most marks would have long faded before your return.”

Byleth’s eyes narrow. Curious. “How do you know all this?”

The question breaks Seteth’s warm composure. His scent is alien, but death and decay are universal scents. He leans forward, his breath sharp. “In Fódlan, all living things possess magic, magic that shapes and is shaped by those who inhabit this land. In such a world, a force as powerful as love becomes magic unto itself. This was once common knowledge. I do not understand how it was lost.”

Byleth has no answer for that, or the avalanche of questions it generates. She does not dwell upon it further.

Instead, she waits for Seteth to recompose himself. He does so with an efficiency even she envies. “So no, this would not have happened, but you may have borne witness to a different sort of devastation when the mate Dimitri waited all those years for did not claim him.”

Water drops splash on Byleth and Dima’s clasped hands. They’re from her eyes. “So this can’t be fixed.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Seteth repeats, and Byleth does not break his jaw. Miracles happen every day. “Your story with Dimitri is not over. This dark night may yet give way to a better tomorrow. The only one with any hope of knowing what will be… is you.”

Byleth groans, head dropping into her hands. _Wonderful._

They sit a while in silence. Dima stirs, gripping her hand. His face tightens as he mumbles below Byleth’s hearing. She tucks a piece of hair behind his ear and his face softens again, a tiny whine pressed from him as she takes her hand away. “I wish I regretted it.”

Seteth rubs her shoulder. It’s meant to be comforting; it doesn’t work. “It is better you do not,” he tells her. “The claim was made, the mating bond established, and one of you must accept what happened and move forward, lest both of you remain trapped by your regret. We both know that person will not be Dimitri.”

No. Byleth is the one who sees both sides of time. Byleth is the one who chooses. Divinity. Chosen one. Blah blah blah.

“After this is resolved,” Byleth says, “we both come clean. No more secrets. Deal?”

Seteth studies her, considering the proposal. Finally, he nods. “I will tell you all I know.”

“Okay.” Deep breath. “What are my options?” Her _real_ options, because locking Dima in a cell will kill him as surely as leaving him unattended almost did.

Seteth’s eyes trace the claim mark. “My understanding is that influence is only one factor of a mate bite’s brightness, but it is a significant one. This mark…”

That thousand-yard stare again, and a scent Byleth does not recognize as human but knows instantly is bitterness and bone-deep grief. “The bite-marks used to appear on both mates. Love shaping and being shaped by love, not brands of ownership like _chattel_.”

Noted, but irrelevant. “How strong is this claim?”

Seteth sighs, rubbing his eyes. “I am no expert on these matters, but… with his mental state, the state of this world, and the power that resides within you? His reality is at your disposal.”

Unexpected. “Even with the—”

She gestures down at the mark. The infection. Her love poisoning him.

Seteth gazes dutifully upon it. “Keep in mind my knowledge of our kind’s intimate magics is personal, not professional. But I would still say yes, even with the damage. Perhaps _because_ and not _despite._ Evidence of a mind hungry to be shaped into something other than what it is.”

Byleth doesn’t know which disturbs her more: that statement, or how much that statement excited her. “You’re saying I could banish his ghosts.”

“You could,” Seteth agrees in that infuriatingly vague tone he’s taken. “Dimitri has always struck me as… eager to please. You may well close the wound in his psyche with a few carefully chosen words.”

Too easy. Byleth knows not to trust it even before Seteth finishes speaking.

Seteth rubs his eyes, hunching forward as Byleth waits for the catch. “Even if you were successful, however, do you believe a mind as dedicated to torturing itself as Dimitri’s would stop? Or would it simply invent new horrors to inflict upon itself? You might spend the rest of your lives trapping and chaining him into numb compliance.”

Byleth deflates. For a moment, she’s the one squeezing Dima’s hand hard enough to break it. “He’d hate me for that.”

“No,” Seteth says, “he would not.”

_No._

And that’s the worst part, isn’t it? Dima wouldn’t hate her; he would be grateful. He hates himself enough to be a willing accessory to his own erasure. He might even love her for it, head falling sweetly into her lap like a faithful hound in the presence of its beloved mistress. Dima wants so desperately to be _good_ , and Byleth would press the kindness into his skin until it smothered him.

_No._

Byleth, and Byleth alone, would carry the hate. Hate for the ones who hurt him. Hate for him. Hate for herself. Her stomach twists at how very much she _wants wants wants_ it anyway. Take him away from here. Obliterate anything and everything that might hurt him ever again, even if that were Dimitri himself.

_No._

“I can’t do that to him,” Byleth whispers.

Seteth half-smiles, but his eyes are empty. “Again I am reminded how wisely Rhea chose in naming you her successor.”

Small comfort, needle-sharp sliding under her nails, but Byleth grabs at it anyway, lets it hurt. “Other options? Can I release him from my claim somehow?”

“It is possible, though I do not know how it happens outside of one partner’s death. Releasing a mate from the bond is deeply traumatic even still.” Seteth expression shutters. “I speak from personal experience on that matter.”

His wife. Byleth almost reaches out to rub Seteth’s shoulder in consolation as he did hers, but her hand curls back as if stung at the thought of touching another. Too much for her right now. “Sorry to bring up bad memories.”

“That is kind of you, but do not fret.” Seteth closes his eyes and lays his fingers on his scent gland. A soft whorl of color flares and vanishes before Byleth can say it’s anything other than a trick of the light. “Death was far from the end for us, though I released her some decades back. But that solution is not available to us now.”

Byleth strokes her thumb over Dima’s hand. More doors closing. There is no solution in Seteth’s words. “I still don’t know what to do. How to fix it.”

“I know,” Seteth says, his mouth crooking with a pale imitation of a smile. The scent of a time and place, achingly sad, all other details beyond imagination. “My information is meant to help you make the best of a terrible decision, but Byleth… I cannot tell you what the right answer is because I do not know. Nor can I choose for you, as Dimitri has forced you to do. I am sorry. I wish I could offer more.”

She wants to be angry, but any anger burns out quick as it flares. Byleth knew better. Scent and love and grief masked the truth, but she knew.

(Sometimes, love is not the solution. It’s the problem.)

“Thank you, Seteth,” Byleth says, and she means it. There’s still a lot unspoken between them, but he’s given her enough to work with for now.

“It is my… well, I suppose pleasure is not the word,” he says, sheepish. “Words are not much in times such as these, but I hope mine will aid you.”

Byleth nods in reassurance. Her words clog in her throat. She lets them stay there. Seteth’s advice is helpful, but there’s… there’s so _much_ inside her now. Not like before. Byleth’s head spins when she thinks too hard about it.

“Good.” Seteth gives Dima’s shin a final pat. “We shall speak again, Byleth. Know that my door is always open to you.”

She doesn’t acknowledge Seteth as he leaves. Seteth, mercifully, does not make an issue of it.

Dima murmurs something in his sleep, his brow tensing as his lips move. Byleth whispers for him to sleep without dreaming, and his face smooths as he settles.

 _Almost peaceful,_ Byleth thinks.

(But Dima is never at peace.)

* * *

Now that Byleth is alone again—

—except she’s not alone. Dima is lying almost peacefully in front of her. She is holding Dima’s hand and watching the steady rise and fall of his chest, comparing it to the slow, steady beat of his heart thumping in Byleth’s ears.

No, Byleth is not alone, and Byleth has never been so alone as she is now. She claimed Dima and he’s never been farther away from her. Even on the nights in the cathedral, when she watched him beg the dead for a moment’s rest from their screams, he’s never been so far away.

In the end, Byleth is always alone behind the walls of glass in her mind.

Predictable, but Byleth is used to it. Comfortable with it. Or was comfortable with it, before Sothis and Garreg Mach. Nothing’s been quite the same since she merged with Sothis, but that’s no matter. Byleth just needs to readjust.

The temptation to banish Dima’s ghosts flashes in her mind again. Byleth hisses through her teeth, fighting the demon in her that demands he return to her side. That’s not what Byleth wants for Dima.

What does Byleth want for Dima?

She wants him to walk out of the darkness. She wants him to stand in the sunlight, proud and strong. She wants him to learn how to walk himself out into the sun, so that if he ever slips into darkness again, he can make it back to her even if she can’t be there to guide him.

Goddess, she wants him _back_.

Byleth thinks of the nest, of that careful, loving shrine. Dima is still in there, buried beneath the rage and hate, so much braver and cleverer and more resourceful than she imagined. She needs a way to draw him out of the monstrous facade he hides behind.

But how?

She thinks of her dad, his love flowing steady as the tides, its ebb and flow washing over her even past death. How he’d never understood her, and how that hadn’t mattered. He’d still trusted her.

Six years ago, Dima hadn’t understood her, either, but he’d wanted to, and in return Byleth had worked to understand him. Strange to think of it now, the slow dance they’d performed, the careful balance Dima struck as he realized Byleth didn’t understand herself, either. How much work it had been, yet it all felt so effortless. His absolute trust in her, even now, and his absence of trust in himself.

Byleth tries to imagine what the Dima she knew would advise if this were someone else. Probably various clever ways to move mountains, but no specifics come to mind. All she can hear is Past Dima quietly assuring her there’s no need to bother, he’s fine treading water in the middle of a storm.

Present Dima would offer to let Byleth hold his head under.

_No._

Her mind scurries away from that terrible thought. Byleth is not Dima, drowning himself in death. Her domain must be the living. Otherwise she learned nothing in the darkness of Zahras, Sothis’s warm hand in Byleth’s in those final, awful moments before she made the ultimate sacrifice.

_Oh, Sothis._

She’d do anything to hear Sothis again. Even plop herself back on that stone throne in the holy tomb until her old friend’s girlish voice rose from the depths—

_Which do you think best? To keep the past with you and risk being trapped? Or to march forward into the future without the knowledge of what has come before to guide you?_

_I’ve always moved forward, no matter what came before._

—except Byleth already knows exactly what Sothis would say, doesn’t she? Five years gone and Byleth can almost see Sothis here, still and solemn, sitting at Manuela’s desk as she mouths _we always move forward._

In this, they are one. Have always been, will always be.

That’s when a solution presents itself.

The notion squeezes Byleth’s dead heart like a real heart might. It does not stop her from reaching through the tattered remnants of their bond, investigating possibilities. The feedback is dull yet harsh, white noise at fever pitch, a rusted blade pressed into skin hard enough to cut.

It’s a cruel solution. A desperate, terrible solution for a worse problem.

_And yet._

It would work… for now. It buys them time. The rest will be up to Dima.

Byleth clenches her fingers into her thighs as she assembles the words to breathe her cruel solution into existence. Her words must be perfect. They must slide like a stiletto, past his ribs and into his heart, cut away the pieces of his soul infected by her claim.

There’s still beauty in their bond, damaged as it is. Fragile beauty, like the flowers that bloom outside their doorstep. She imagines herself cutting away the broken tendrils of their connection. Mouths a silent prayer that the roots will remain strong enough to grow again one day.

(Pointless. No one is listening but Byleth.)

When she’s ready, Byleth rubs her thumb over Dima’s hand, focusing on their shared connection. She plucks the thread in her mind. “Can you wake up for me?”

Dima returns to her slowly, a sunrise rather than a thunderclap. She watches the tension return to his limbs, his eye crack open, gaze skittering between her face and the ghosts already gathering. He’s all confused longing, need and fear. Chamomile and blood and fields of corpses. She squeezes his hand and breathes through the pain as he grips hers.

“Alpha,” he whispers, reverent, terrified. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I—”

“Shhhhh.” She puts a finger to his mouth and he falls back, silent. His lips press against her finger. “Can you ignore them for a little while? Focus on me. I want to talk.”

“I—I’ll try.” Breathless, uncertain.

“Okay.” That should buy her enough time. “What happened?”

His eye widens, and he glances around, terrified. Shrinking into the covers, he says, “I was selfish. Weak. I could not give them her head, yet I dared to—I dared to—” He chokes on a wet gasp of breath. “I must give them her head. They say you’ll keep me from avenging them. They won’t stop screaming. They won’t stop—”

She breathes, long and slow. His heartbeat is fast, too fast in her dead chest. “What did they ask you to do?”

Dima whimpers, eye skittering around the room. “They demand I strike you down.”

 _He’d cut his own throat before he tried to kill_ **you**.

Five years gone and still no one knows Dima better than Felix Fraldarius. Even callous, tossed-off comments cut deep enough to bleed them all dry.

Byleth, in her arrogance, hadn’t listened. She let herself forget, yet again, that no one understands hate like Felix. Hate is Felix’s armor and his blade. Hate is his only protection against his armies of grief.

Byleth hates too. She loves Dima, but she hates his ghosts. Hates them as she has never hated anything in this life. She would strangle every last one of them with the Sword of the Creator’s blades if she could, watch the unlife drain from their twisted forms.

Useless thoughts. She can’t kill ghosts. That’s why she loses every time.

“I tried,” Dima swears to her, solemn as a holy knight. “I tried to—I thought if I cut it off, cut the mark away, that they might be appeased, but it didn’t work. You’d think a monster like me would be good at destroying things, but I failed.” His chuckle is bitter, joyless. Death rises like Duscur, like Garreg Mach, like five years gone.

Byleth _hates_ his ghosts.

“You won’t have to cut our bond,” Byleth says, pulling at the threads she’s isolated in their bond, “because you’re going to forget it exists.”

Hates that she’s going to give him back to them.

“What?” he blinks at her, confused. Blood. A note of panic. “I don’t understand.”

Byleth forces herself neutral. Steady breath. Even scent. Heartless. “You’ve always obeyed me,” she begins, dropping into a low, soothing tone that still carried the full weight of an alpha’s command. “I’m ordering you to forget that I came to you in the goddess tower and everything that happened between us. You’ll remember that you spent your heat alone, and that it was uneventful.”

He stares at her, mouth gaping as his already-pale face turns ashen. She can smell the blood and salt beneath the decay.

“No,” and Dima definitely cracks something in Byleth’s hand as he squeezes, “no, no, no, please, _no_ —”

“Shhh.” Byleth strokes Dima’s cheek with her free, unbroken hand, and even in his panic he leans into her. “Let me explain.”

_A little forgetting might do him a lot of good._

Sothis’s offhand remark, but true, even if Byleth despises it. Dima cannot forget Duscur; his mind will not let him. He has denied himself everything to pursue his bloody path. If his fractured mind views Byleth’s claim—Byleth’s love—as an existential threat to his vengeance, then it’s only a matter of time until he tries to eliminate the “threat” again.

Something must give, so let it be Byleth. Let her release him from the claim through this mental sleight of hand. Let him return to his bloody path and trust that one day he will find a way back to her. Back to _himself._

One day, but today, Dima hand shakes, his lips trembling as he tries to process the enormity of what she’s asking of him. “You want me to _forget_ you.” He chokes on the last word. “As if I could ever forget anything about you. But I can’t forget. I tried for so long. Now you want me to forget the warmth of your hands, feel of you inside me, the sounds you made as my tongue—”

 _No._ Byleth can’t listen to this and hold herself together. “I want you to remember those things too,” Byleth says, “but right now, they’re hurting you. You said yourself that the ghosts won’t stop screaming.”

“They never stop,” he murmurs to himself, slightly bitter. Curious, but irrelevant.

“You’re afraid you’ll hurt me because of them, right?” Byleth asks. Now is not the time to point out that even in his night terror, he has never physically hurt her. “This is how you’ll keep me safe. If you hide the memories of your heat and our bond from yourself, the ghosts will stop asking you to hurt me.”

_They won’t use me to make you hurt yourself._

Byleth hates his ghosts.

A tear slips down his cheek. “I suppose it is only right,” Dima says, “that I be denied even the memory of you. Am I to forget everything, then, until my body gives out?”

That question would be a slap to the face had Byleth not anticipated the blow. “Just the heat and the bond. Forgetting everything is—”

“Impossible,” Dima breathes.

“—unnecessary,” Byleth finishes. She only became a ‘threat’ after the heat and the claim. “Even that will only be temporary. Once it’s safe and you’re ready, you can remember.”

“It will never be safe,” he informs her, his voice distant. “I almost killed you in my sleep. You will never be safe with me.”

“Yes, I will,” Byleth says. Firm, commanding. “I will be safe with you someday, and you’ll remember.”

“When I am rotting wherever my body falls, perhaps.” Dima drags her hand—and Byleth with it—closer to him. There is honey in the rot but no chamomile. Dima does not trust himself, so Byleth will trust Dima until he is ready. “It would be kinder if you killed me, but I don’t deserve the mercy of dying with your name on my lips.”

The way he says it, so matter-of-fact, should rattle Byleth. It does not, because she expected this as well. “You know I won’t do that. It’s my duty as your alpha to keep you safe. To keep you from—” _using me to justify hurting yourself,_ “—hurting me, you’ll forget, until you’re ready. This is an order from your alpha. Do I make myself clear?”

Her most commanding voice, spiked hard with her scent. Byleth hates preying on his weaknesses so blatantly, but this is a matter of life and death.

Rather than shock him into compliance, however, Dima only seems more distressed. “I can’t,” he says, quiet at first, but as he repeats it, his voice rises with his panic. “I can’t.” Dima’s voice cracks. “Please don’t ask this of me. _Please_.”

That desperation in his eye, his voice, and his scent puts Byleth back in the heat, to Dima shattering he begged her to claim him. It moved Byleth then, and look what happened, so it won’t move her now. “You can, and you will.”

 _“Please!_ ” he screams, but Dima’s scream doesn’t echo like hers did in the cathedral. Byleth frowns at the strain of his bandages. Manuela reopened the flesh Byleth magically forced closed to clean out the wound as best she could to prevent infection. The new incision was shallower, angled away from the artery he’d nicked, but that didn’t make popping the stitches a good idea. “Please. I can’t forget. Let me keep this. Let me _stay_.”

Ugly things creep into her mouth. Vicious answers, born of rage. Unhelpful. She sets those thoughts aside.

The wrong answers populate because Byleth didn’t prepare a response to pure devastation. Shortsighted of her. Then again, maybe the wound she’s creating in him now, this piece of him she’s amputating, is beyond response. She settles for a different tack. “Don’t strain your neck. You’ll open your stitches.”

“Let them open,” he sobs, because of course Dima doesn’t care if he bleeds to death in front of Byleth; he’s already done it two and three-quarters times, so what’s one more? “I can’t forget. I can’t forget you. Let me stay, _please._ Let me _stay._ ” The last part is less words and more high-pitched keening wheezed from choking lungs.

For a moment, Byleth thinks she sees Sothis at Manuela’s desk as she’d sat at Byleth’s desk all those years ago when Dima cracked open, oceans of grief pouring out of him. _We always move forward,_ she’d mouthed then. This time not-Sothis mouths _don’t cry._

Why would Byleth cry? There’s nothing left to cry about. They have no other way forward.

She blinks, and Sothis is not there and never will be again, but Dima is, the pain in his eye and scent taking her breath away. _Focus_. “It will be okay, Dima,” Byleth tells him, her voice so preternaturally calm even she’s surprised by it. “You will be okay.”

She _really_ hates his ghosts.

“Don’t leave me,” he pleads, his high-pitched cries of grief ricocheting through her empty chest.

“I won’t. I’ll be here waiting until you’re ready,” Byleth swears, wincing internally as he squeezes her broken hand again. She won’t leave. Dima waited for her for five years, against all reason. Byleth will return the favor.

He sobs, biting at his lips. “You say that, yet you ask—you ask _this_ of me—”

Something about his anguish pokes a deep and icy cold spot inside her gut. Leaves frost upon the glass through which she observes his tears.

“You—”

_**You** chose this. You chose them over me._

Byleth cuts herself off. Counterproductive. Those words have no place in this moment. Dima made his choice and Byleth must accept it, even if he cannot. They will move forward, not pick at the wounds they’ve made in each other. “This is temporary,” she reminds him again, fixing her sight above his even as Dima’s gaze and _ash-blood-salt_ scent beg her for comfort. She can’t give him that. Not this time. “A reprieve. Walk whatever path you need to walk, Dima. I will be waiting.”

Dima curls around her hands, but already there’s a scent of… something. Something old and new, fresh-fallen snow and flames roaring in hearths rather than across battlefields. Byleth thinks it might be relief.

(Something else as well. Hidden below everything else. Familiar only because she’s caught it so often in Felix, in Dorothea: ozone. Fascinating, but unimportant in this moment.)

He sinks into the bed, crestfallen. “I don’t want to forget. I can’t lose you.”

Byleth wipes away the tears from his face. He kisses her thumb as it brushes over the corner of his mouth. “You’re not losing me. I’ll still be here.”

“Aren’t I?” He sobs out the words.

_I’m not the one who left this time._

That cold spot in her stomach again, but Byleth wills it away. “Be honest. Is there any other way to keep you alive and me safe?”

A thought exercise for him, not her. She already knows her answer and his. They are not the same. She expects this.

“I’m sorry.” Dima’s voice is a heartbreak whisper, or would be if Byleth were capable of that. For once, his apology doesn’t irritate her. Probably because it's not an apology, but an acknowledgement. Chamomile rising in the blood and salt and ash. Acceptance.

He will obey. Dima will bury the memories of them and return to his wrongful place as an avatar for the dead. Byleth doesn’t know why she would feel disappointment at an inevitable outcome.

“I’m sorry.” Now that one does annoy her. “I know I’m nothing but a filthy monster, and you—”

“No,” Byleth growls. Anger, unexpected. She leans over him, a looming presence, and he cannot look away. “You are not _nothing._ You are _mine,_ and you’re stronger than you know. You’ll find your way back.”

Byleth believes that, believes in Dima, despite everything. The shrine-nest is proof he can honor the dead without destroying himself and everyone around him. He will find his way to a better path when he’s ready. Her cruel solution gives him back time.

“I’m not strong. I’m tired.” Dima’s voice cracks and splinters over each word. “So tired.”

“I know you are,” she says, smiling sadly at him. “That’s why you need to forget for now. You spent your heat alone, and it passed uneventfully. That’s what you’ll say if anyone asks. If you feel doubts, or someone asks questions that confuse you, you can let them slide away, too, because it’s okay to forget until you’re ready. Take as long as you need.”

She has to trust Dima will use this time well. That he’ll leave his bloody path before it’s too late, for himself and for everyone around him. Byleth has to trust Dima. There is no other choice.

Until then… well, there’s a war raging outside Garreg Mach. Millions are suffering. Ending the war will be a far better use of her energy than ruminating over what can’t be changed.

“Let me stay,” he pleads, one last time, but she can already see the way his eye tracks the ghosts instead of her face.

Impulsive of her, selfish of her, but Byleth wants one last moment where Dima sees _her_ , not his fucking ghosts. She captures his lips, sips his tears. He opens so sweetly, humming brokenly as she licks the salt from his mouth. He’s frenzy and despair, hazy and lost and aching beneath her, and Byleth no longer knows where his pain ends and hers begins.

“Sleep,” Byleth murmurs into his mouth. “In the morning, you’ll wake up, and you’ll forget.”

Dima’s eyelid slides shut as his body goes slack. His hand slips from Byleth’s grasp.

She watches him—his mark—for some time after. The bright beacon of jade at his throat dims, though the mark itself is no less prominent. It would hurt if not for the slow recede of the angry red streaks with the dimming.

(It would hurt if Byleth felt anything.)

But she has lingered long enough. Time to move forward. Hollow-eyed, even scent, though her hand throbs. Mercedes will need Byleth set it properly, the sooner the better. She just needs another moment to finish her work. To collect her thoughts. To stop dwelling upon the dimming mark and the way the beautiful, fragile thing that bloomed inside them both snaps shut as it dies.

 _You won this battle,_ Byleth whispers to his ghosts, _but I will win the war. When he pries himself from your cold dead hands, mine will be waiting._

Cauterize the wound. Keep her dead heart from killing the rest of her. Heartless. Inhuman. Ashen Demon.

Byleth can do this. Stiffening her spine, she swallows and walks out of the infirmary.

The Blue Lions are waiting, a cacophony of scent and deafening silences. Sylvain hunches over on the bench, arms wrapped around his stomach. Felix paces, dark and thunderous, and Sylvain tracks his path with his eyes. Ingrid is stone-still against the wall, retreating into a dutiful shell. Ashe is a poor imitation of duty, biting his lip as he watches his friends with red, puffy eyes. Annette has Dima’s cape in her hands, scrubbing at the blood in the fabric with raw, red hands. Mercedes has battle calm etched deep into new lines in her face. In the corner, Marianne kneels, her hands clasped in hopeless prayer. Flayn stares at Byleth with ancient eyes that have seen too much and not enough.

They all smell like pain now.

Not Byleth. She’s heartless. Her eyes are dry and her scent is neutral.

“Professor?” Ashe. Pale-faced. Rotten pastries and fields and fields of corpses. He is concerned for her. There’s no need to be.

“What the hell happened in there?” Sylvain asks. He’s trembling slightly, Byleth notices.

She ignores the questions, spoken and unspoken. “War room. One hour. We need to discuss next steps.” Byleth holds her broken hand out to Mercedes. “Please set this.”

Felix freezes mid-pace as his face makes some ugly expression. “‘Next steps’? That’s what you call what the bo—what you call _Dimitri—_ ”

“One hour.” Byleth repeats, cutting off the tirade. “We have a war to win.”

Felix falls back, eyes round and mouth open. Ingrid flinches. The Blue Lions make a show of staring at each other.

“Mercedes?” Byleth prompts again.

Mercedes takes Byleth’s hand and begins manipulating the bones into their proper alignment to heal the break. The rest of the Lions gather themselves to shuffle out of the hall and into the war room. As they leave, each Lion watches Byleth through wary eyes.

Better.

They think her heartless. They are right. Byleth is heartless, but that is what this moment demands of her. Someone must accept what happened and move forward, lest they all remain trapped by regret. That is Byleth’s duty, to the Blue Lions, and to all of Fódlan.

And that is what Byleth will do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s a wrap, folks. 
> 
> I’m sure ~~some~~ all of you are asking “wtf that’s it?” right now. That’s fair. So let’s talk about the future of the Teacup Chihuahua Crapsack A/B/O Cinematic Universe.
> 
> Early in HS/DN’s planning process, I gamed out the likeliest post-heat/claim outcomes. Everything pointed to Dimitri’s mental health spiraling _hard_. He’s not ready to confront his delusions or function without his “feral” persona. Byleth and the claim bond, no matter how wanted, are an existential threat. So the crash was inevitable, but even I went “wtf brain” when it hit me that this would be enough to tip Dimitri into hurting himself. 
> 
> Once I decided Yes, We’re Going There, the story scope increased exponentially. To manage the scope, I revamped HS/DN to work both as a stand-alone fic with a distinct narrative arc and as the first act of a bigger story and the universe it occupies. (So the first Ironman movie, but sad and with porn. Lots of porn. I wanted a good ROI on my porn/misery index.)
> 
> I‘m working on the next entries in the series (prequel up first), but since I pre-write full fics before posting, the next story won’t drop for a while. You can subscribe on my author page to get updates when I post. Also, I hear this story rereads well. I’ve done some light clean-up and minor retcons… and I deitalicized most flashbacks for ease of reading.
> 
> I am committed to seeing this universe through, but life has no guarantees. That’s why I found a resolution to HS/DN that gives the readers a clear through-line to a better future. Since Dimitri is now back on his “canon” path, and we’ll still hit the basic beats of Azure Moon, rest assured that Dimitri remembers everything after Gronder. Once he’s better, he and Byleth confront what happened and find ways to help each other cope with their respective issues. So even if Byleth and Dimitri aren’t okay _now_ , they can—and will!—find happiness in the future.
> 
> Now even with the same beats, my version will be… twisty. I’m looking forward to exploring regressed!Byleth, Dimitri believing ~~Byleth never kept her promise~~ he spent his heat alone ~~despite the many holes his brain keeps poking in that story~~ , extremely traumatized Blue Lions trying to cope with Dimitri almost dying and Byleth’s shutdown, and a late-arriving Lion whose stoic face belies an internal reaction that can be summed up with [this gif](http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/flame-war.gif).
> 
> Time to roll the credits (with bonus worldbuilding!):
> 
>   * Another big thank you to Barbaradentro, Bu, and IronPen, who were my betas and pre-readers in the early days when I needed someone to tell me this wasn’t complete horseshit. Extra bonus thanks to Barbaradentro for reading everything I vomit on the page, calling me on crap, and handling my not-so-secret anxiety spirals.
>   * I am presenting the “Eleanor Shellstrop Bad Place Award” for the reader comment that left me most shook. There were many excellent nominees, but the winner is **Ireva** , who, back in chapter _seven_ , posted her theory that the A/B/O system is a fucked-up offshoot of Nabatean reproduction. She was COMPLETELY RIGHT and I was SHOOK. Bravo, Ireva.
>   * It turns out that for a sexually dimorphic species, drinking giant hermaphroditic space lizard blood will fuck up your descendants for centuries, because the human body will only generate one type of weird lizard sex magic, not both types as Sothis intended, and the choice is random and arbitrary. 
>   * Now to answer the question burning in all your minds: _anything they want._ Nabatean genitals outside their draconic form are like a grab bag: you have a general idea what’s in their pants, but you never really know until you open them.
> 

> 
> A final thank you to everybody who left kudos and comments, from folks who left me pages of feels on every chapter to the ones who simply screamed. Some of you cracked me up, some of you almost made me cry. There were meme vids and art and I adore it all. Most importantly, you told me how my words made you feel. That feedback is so special to me. I love knowing how my stories affect readers. You’ve given me that in spades and I just… really fucking love all y’all for that. I will miss reading all your wonderful, funny, insightful, emotional comments after each chapter. I’ve been so spoiled and can’t wait to hear from you in the future. ~~Motivation to move my ass on the prequel.~~
> 
> So I’ve finally come to the end of my rampantly self-indulgent authors’ notes ~~thanks to AO3’s oppressive end note character limit~~. If you read this, you’re the best. This story has been my baby these past nine months (ha), and it’s hard to say goodbye. But it’s time.
> 
> I love you all. See you in the next fic.


	18. post credits (ne me cherche pas, je ne suis plus la, baby)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What’s a ~~teacup chihuahua crapsack a/b/o~~ cinematic universe without a post-credits scene?

**GREAT TREE MOON 1186**

It’s been a long five years.

Feels even longer while trudging through swampland.

 _Chin up, Dora,_ she tells herself. _Almost there now._ She’s only been telling herself that for… what, three days now?

It’d be easier if she didn’t have to stop every five minutes to pull something disgusting off her body. Her dress is soggy and her feet no longer remember being dry. She’s no wilting violet, but she’s a city girl through and through. Give her concrete and cobblestone over trees and grass any day, and anything slimy or slime-adjacent is a hard pass, please and thanks.

Another slug thingy is crawling up her skirt. She shudders and drops it on a fallen tree trunk. It’s all she can do not to throw it across the swamp.

It would be easier if this had gone how she expected.

Scratch that. She never had expectations. Expectations were for people who thought they’d live past tomorrow. She shed that delusion five years ago, if she ever held it in the first place.

Her contingency plan, meticulous as it was, had a snowball’s chance in hell of being put into motion, because life didn’t warn you before it cut you down. In both her lines of work, people disappeared, and she wasn’t naive enough to believe they retired to quaint seaside villages. She aspired to be one of the not-disappeared, but the odds were against her.

Now she’s standing in two inches of liquid gunk with only her unmet non-expectations as company. Maybe she’s a snowball, because this sure feels like hell.

Even with the long odds, she’d planned several escape routes with exquisite care. There was the safehouse in Rusalka under a false name, the forged identification papers, three separate sets in case one or both were flagged. (Not that her papers are ever flagged.) A bag pre-packed with road clothing plus two gowns, wigs, and accessories, a Levin sword, her tool kit, two weeks’ rations, and her folio, important documents sandwiched between sheet music. Maps of the routes through Adrestian and Dukedom territory with the fewest Imperial checkpoints. Letters of introduction from figures important enough to raise eyebrows but not important enough to check whether they were still alive. Approximately 5000 gold in counterfeit credit from all major remaining banks, and a diamond parure worth of loose gems for bribing officials.

It was a (mostly) flawless plan, one she thought she’d never use, but the little voice inside her insisted she make one anyway. Sometimes when she listens close to that voice, it sounds like Professor Eisner.

At the last minute, she added a demonic beast-bone knife. It’s even more powerful than the human-bone knives she used for rituals in the past, though each time she uses it, her stomach roils thinking of the _wrongness_ of the being she sourced it from. The slash across her mark, reapplied yesterday morning, holds strong.

She completed the ritual with the same flawless execution as her warm-up scales, the slice as perfect as her pitch. It’s just as she was taught, all those years ago.

Despite that, she’s surprised by how effective the ritual is. Her bond feedback is cut like a puppet from strings, a silence so unnatural it leaves behind a high, harsh buzz in her ears. Now that her mate can’t sense her, her whereabouts can’t be tracked, and she can’t be compelled to return by command. They’re safe from one another, as long as she maintains the ritual.

It might’ve been nice if she’d been told, in all those hours spent practicing on rotted fruit, that the cutting ritual would be the emotional equivalent of hacking off her arm with a rusty bonesaw. That the absence of her alpha’s presence in the back of her mind would ache like a phantom limb might, trying to reach into the abyss with a hand that’s no longer there. That the grief would weigh down her body like being chained to concrete blocks and dropped in a lake, and she’d wake up shaking as she cried out for the missing piece of her soul.

No, she wouldn’t have been told, even if she had asked. She was taught this ritual with all the others, but it was a ritual of last resort. Her pack made no secret what they thought of omegas who needed it. Stupid. Reckless.

Weak.

 _Bullshit,_ she thinks with a half-hysterical laugh. It took every bit of strength she had to rise from that bed, cut her mark, and leave the life she’d built with her darling mate behind. The life she’d built from nothing, destroyed in three minutes. Destroyed with one mistake.

(It wasn’t a mistake. It was never a mistake.)

She perches on a log while she pulls off her boots to pour out swamp water and wring out her socks— _again_.

This wasn’t what she’d wanted, but since when had that mattered? She’d never been given a damn thing in this life. Everything she had, she’d begged, bartered, or stolen. When she wanted more time, she stole that too. So she stole time, stole love from weeks, months, years better spent preparing a quiet departure from secrets upon secrets, lies upon lies. Selfish of her, but she’s never claimed to be a good woman. Where she comes from, and where she’s been since, good women don’t last long.

Her heat was supposed to be their last hurrah. The final act in their big, foolish, star-crossed love. She was not, even in her heartsick heat-addled stupidity, supposed to _bite_.

And she was definitely not supposed to ask her mate to bite her back. She’d barely had the words out before there were teeth in her neck as the world went soft and warm and _beautiful_.

It was beautiful, until the morning after, when the soft, giddy warmth ebbed away and left her with cold, hard reality. As she’d admired her mark at her vanity, her body froze as the gut-punch horror that she’d just killed her alpha spread through her.

Her mistake. Not the bond (never a mistake), but the timing. The noose has been tightening for a while. Her last assignment had bad intel, the kind designed to leave a trail for someone else to follow and report back. Kestrel, her handler, sends panicked missives disguised as requests for status updates but hasn’t responded to the last two drops. Odds were high they’d made their way into the wrong hands.

They _know_. They know someone’s a traitor, and she’s on the shortlist. If her cover’s blown and they find out about the claim, her mate will swing in the wind beside her. No one will believe that an omega could keep a secret this big from her alpha. Many will think her betrayal was on her alpha’s orders, and the gross ignorance she’d exploited in her work would be her alpha’s death sentence.

(She’s insulted at the implication already, and it hasn’t even happened. Yet.)

Still. She’d known the risks, but her mate hadn’t. Her mate didn’t even know there _was_ a risk, much less the true depth of her sins. So she fled before the truth killed them both, seeking out the one person who might be able to change fate.

After a few more hours of swampy plodding, the ground finally, _finally,_ solidifies into dry earth as the trees thin. Sending up a silent thanks to whomever might listen to the prayers of bad women, she walks out of the woods.

The scent in the air and the humming of the bees reach her before the sight does. They were poor preparation her for what she finds: a wide meadow, brimming with wildflowers in every color she can imagine, and possibly a few she can’t, all framed by thick green grass. Birds tweet as they fly above her. A doe and her two fawns nibble at the bounty from several yards away, undisturbed by her entrance, and rabbits peek out from where they play in the grass, and a small flock of pheasants flutter about a stony perch, their feathers luminous against the azure sky.

Well. _This_ is a sight. Her memory drags up dusty old fields, nothing so lush and vibrant as the bucolic paradise stretched out before her. City girl that she is, she’s usually quick to turn up her nose at pastoral vignettes, but this? This could make her a convert. Her mate would laugh to hear her say it now.

It’s hard to imagine such drastic regrowth, even with five years of neglect. Could she have gotten lost somehow? Even with her meticulous planning, that swamp didn’t exactly come with arrows pointing her in the right direction.

She shades her eyes with her hand and looks to the horizon. High in the mountains are the familiar ivory spires, thick forests hedged by thick stone fortifications. Even from this distance, she can pick out signs of disrepair and overgrowth, but it doesn’t matter. They take her breath away, just as they did six years ago.

Garreg Mach was a symbol of hope for her. Not in the way of the nobility, seeking the goddess’s reassurance that they deserved the wealth and privilege handed to them upon silver platters. No, back then, it was the hope of escape to a better life, a life where she didn’t lie in bed at night wondering when the inevitable descent from her dizzying heights and back into the gutter would begin.

Now… her hope is a battered, bruised thing, but it _lives_. It lives while so much else inside her and around her is a smoking ruin.

She wants that hope to grow. She wants to _believe_ again. Wants to believe she’s not playing the heroine in a tragedy. Wants to believe that an old friend might smile to see her again, even with enough blood on her hands to make an Ashen Demon take pause.

Needs to believe that a sinner like her can wash away blood with more blood.

Because Professor Eisner is _alive_ , and that is a miracle. She still struggles to believe it after what she saw, the fall into the ravine and certain death, but there are hundreds whose eyes saw otherwise. Who is she to contradict them? Who would she be if she did?

Maybe it shouldn’t be so hard to believe. If anyone could come back from the dead, it’s Byleth Eisner, for whom even divinity is as mundane as washing dishes. Miracles happen around her without her notice. Maybe, just maybe, Byleth will spare a miracle or three for her.

One can only hope.

There’s a rustle from a thicket on her ten o’clock. She crouches into the tall grass, but unless she gets lucky, she’s a sitting duck in the middle of this field. Three days of swamplands will draw even the most paranoid women out of the shadows. Better to talk her way out of whatever trouble is coming than go on the offensive.

Just in case, however, she casts the first movements of her meteor glyph. Bit aggressive to have all that ambient magic hanging in the atmosphere, but she has places to be, grand entrance scenes to stage.

Out of the thicket comes a small squad of knights. Maybe half a dozen with their squires, a few camp servants following behind them. Quite extravagant in these trying times. Road-worn armor, but it’s the good stuff. Their leader, a tall blonde woman, has a creepy death sword that reminds her of the Lance of Ruin and Luín, or the Sword of the Creator.

 _Wait a minute._ She’s seen that creepy sword before. Squinting, she makes out the Crest of Seiros emblazoned on their gear.

So they’re Knights of Seiros, high enough ranked that their personal retainers and staff are taken on as Church staff. Inner circle. Plus, the leader’s an alpha. She can smell it from here. An alpha close enough to rut to tempt, but not close enough to trigger on accident.

_Perfect._

Professional that she is, she still anticipated this would be the hard part. There’s far too much improvisation for her taste, and odds were high the actors that would blow their lines. But here? In an open field with no one else around for miles? If she can coax a little cooperation from her co-star, she can wrangle herself into the director’s chair.

With a sly smirk disguised as a guileless smile, she waves at the knights, disrupting the meteor cast. The magic dissipates into the atmosphere, so she recycles it to cast her damsel glamour. Her scent conveys helplessness and desperation, the perfect _only-you-can-save-me_ blend to lure single alphas away from their packs. It takes more magic than before, with the claim dampening her scent to other alphas, but she manages. She even twists her glamour to conceal the notes of her mate’s scent, as their scent threads through hers now, another way her claim deters rival alphas. Once she’s ready, she motions to the leader with her best come-hither look.

“Who’s there?” The blonde knight asks as she approaches. Her voice is rough. She has her hand on her sword’s pommel and her aura spikes high, the scent reminiscent of fresh-forged steel and the forests of Faerghus. 

_Dammit, what was her name again?_ She settles for widening her smile as she curtsies hello.

“Hey there,” the knight says, subtly shifting her stance. She’s too close and ready to pounce, her body registering danger before her mind does. A hint of woodsmoke rises in the knight’s scent as a warning when she picks up the ambient magic.

How disappointing. There’s no danger here, as long as the knight cooperates, and she _will_ cooperate. Still, best to play it safe and shift her glamour back to neutral.

In response to change, the knight steps back, genuine anger plastered over with a calm pre-battle facade. Can’t hide the rising fires as well, however. The knight knows she’s being manipulated, but that’s fine. The curtain hasn’t yet risen. “Look, I don’t know if you’re lost, miss, but it’s not safe to wander out here alone. My squad and I can escort you to the nearest village, if you’d like.” The knight’s eyes narrow and she frowns, some of the smoke clearing as she sifts through old memories. “Wait… do I know you? You look familiar.”

_Showtime, Dora._

With a light flourish, she sets her bag down and brings her wrists together, baring them for the knight. Her face is deceptively smooth as she shifts her glamour to a far subtler blend of _please-save-me_ and _let’s-talk-brass-tacks_. “My name is Dorothea Arnault,” she begins. “I’m a former student at Garreg Mach, and I need you to arrest me.”

The knight’s stance doesn’t change, but her lips press into a razor-thin line. Probably can’t decide between striking Dorothea down right now or laughing her ass off. Dorothea amps the glamour up another notch. This woman needs to take her seriously.

“Sure, Miss Arnault,” the knight says, looking her up and down. “You want me to arrest you. Anything in particular you want me to charge you with?”

Dorothea laughs her bell-like laugh, the one that made the most powerful men and women in Fódlan fall at her feet. Must she carry this farce for both of them?

“My crime?” Dorothea asks with her stage-ready smile and glamour. “Why, I’m an Imperial spy.”

It’s been a long five years.

As the knight binds her wrists, Dorothea dares, for the first time since Professor Eisner fell, to believe that everything just might be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [¯\\_(ツ)_/¯](https://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/surprise_bitch_american_horror_story.gif)


End file.
